Coinbase launches USDC and joins CENTRE as a co-founding member

Coinbase announced in a blog post that, starting from today, it will allow customers to buy, sell, send and receive the USD Coin stablecoin (USDC) on Coinbase. Coinbase Pro will be supported in the coming weeks. Coinbase joined Circle as a co-founding member of the CENTRE Consortium. Residents of the U.S., outside of New York, will be able to buy and sell USDC but customers elsewhere will initially only be able to send and receive it. Coinbase added that more geographies would be available in the future.

USDC is one of the so-called regulated stablecoins. It is competing against Paxos Standard and Gemini dollar, but it uses a different governance model. CENTRE is a governed network and consortium, which lets any institution that satisfies the requirements join and issue USDC. The issuers are incentivized by earning fees. CIRCLE’s goal is to create a decentralized issuance model, which doesn’t rely on just one institution like Paxos and Gemini.