JUST IN: Coinbase Acquires Minority Stake in USDC Issuer Circle

Coinbase, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, announced that it has acquired a minority stake in Circle Internet Financial, the provider of the USDC stablecoin.

The deal will also end the Center Consortium, a joint venture between Coinbase and Circle responsible for issuing and managing USDC.

The Number of Blockchains Where USDC Can Be Used Will Also Increase

In addition to the deal, USDC will expand its reach by integrating with six more blockchains, bringing the total number of supported chains to 15. The names of the new blockchains have not yet been announced. It was previously announced that USDC will launch on Polkadot, Near, Optimism and Cosmos networks. These will likely be four of the new blockchains.

The details of how much shares Coinbase bought from Circle were not shared.

According to the shared blog post, “Coinbase and Circle will continue to earn interest on USDC reserves.” The article also included the following statements:

“According to the new arrangement of the parties, this income will continue to be shared according to the amount of USDC held on each of our platforms, and we will also now equally share the interest income from the general distribution and use of USDC.”

*Not investment advice.