Download the USBC white paper
USBC’s long term vision
The white paper for USBC is now available for public consumption, outlining the project’s long term vision.
USBC is a U.S.-dollar backed stablecoin designed to promote financial inclusion and regulatory compliance. It officially launched on Uphold last month and now offers best-in-class rewards of 5.25% on their platform.
From USBC’s announcement:
The long term vision for USBC has always been around its non-custodial potential, such that anyone around the world can access U.S. dollars with a digital wallet they control in a privacy preserving and compliant manner. The newly released USBC white paper outlines this vision.
Our key insight for USBC was the need to develop an identity and risk management stack to complement the innovation of tokenization. This allows a win-win scenario, allowing us to leverage the benefits of digitization powered by distributed ledgers while still providing the necessary tools such that these financial innovations can exist within traditional compliance frameworks including Know Your Customer and sanctions screening.
This identity and risk management stack could conceivably be applied to any tokenized asset, whether that’s digital art, real estate titles, or even bank deposits, but our initial focus is around the development of the world’s most compliant stablecoin—USBC.
On the issue with stablecoins, today:
Fiat-backed stablecoins represent one of the first killer apps emerging from the rise of blockchain technology, and it’s easy to see why. Today, billions of people around the world still lack access to a basic bank account, many of whom reside in nations where there’s a lack of long term trust in their local monetary system. Meanwhile, cross-border payments continue to be slow and expensive. These challenges essentially represent a daily tax on those who are most economically vulnerable.
A stablecoin solves all of these problems with one fell swoop, allowing anyone in the world easy access to digital dollars with a digital wallet that they themselves own and control. Moreover, they can send money from one wallet to another instantly for little to no fees.
The problem is that the most widely available stablecoins, a market currently valued at around $200 billion dollars and is expected to grow into the trillions within a few years, don’t have any form of identity attached. As a result, they have naturally become favorite tools of terrorists in the Middle East, arms dealers in Russia, and drug cartels in Mexico and Asia, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report.