KuCoin Lists Circle’s USDC Coin, Sniffed Out by Bots

Bots have sniffed out the listing of USDC, the dollar-pegged asset of the Circle app, on KuCoin. The listing will expand KuCoin’s portfolio of stablecoins, which is a class of crypto assets that is trending now.

https://twitter.com/NewlyListedCoin/status/1044455974512128001

The news was corroborated by another bot:

https://twitter.com/CoinWhisperBot/status/1044455416497876992

The USDC asset follows the launch of two fully legalized dollar-pegged assets, Gemini Dollar (GUSD) and Paxos Standard (PAX). However, USCD is a lesser known option, and is yet to face the scrutiny of the crypto community. There is no freely available information on USDC, and Circlepay has not issued an official announcement for the asset.

This is precisely the reason why the listing was strange, as no additional information was available. The Circle app, backed by Goldman Sachs, has been active in the crypto space, acquiring the Poloniex exchange, and announcing the USDC asset back in May. Initially, Circle promised it would launch USDC on Poloniex:

“Circle will make USDC available as a primary market or trading pair on Poloniex. Customers who purchase USDC tokens from Circle can transfer those to Poloniex and trade with a price-stable currency on major crypto asset markets.”

Circle also claimed that major exchanges have expressed interest in listing the asset. The USDC asset uses the CENTRE framework, an open source tool for creating asset-backed stablecoins. USDC resembles TrueUSD (TUSD) the most, as it could in theory be created and destroyed based on bank balances. However, the plan is to take a small fee when withdrawing from USDC to dollars.

The actual unrolling of USDC has gained a bit of attention on social media:

https://twitter.com/anondran/status/1043788134142627841

The launch would be further evidence of the trend for the creation of more dollar-pegged assets, which are seen as bridges between exchanges.

If tradable, the USDC asset would increase the portfolio of stablecoins on KuCoin. The exchange does not line up among the richest Tether (USDT) wallets, but has several pairs against the dollar-pegged asset.