British financial technology company Revolut plans to issue its own stablecoin, CoinDesk reported, citing four people familiar with the matter. Two of the people familiar with the matter revealed that the company has made considerable progress in creating a stablecoin.
Revolut, which provides cryptocurrency trading services and has 45 million users worldwide, obtained a British banking license in July this year. The company last month announced a secondary stock offering to provide liquidity to employees, valuing it at $45 billion.
When asked about its stablecoin plans, a spokesperson for Revolut said the company hopes to expand its cryptocurrency offerings and take a compliance-first approach to become a safe haven for the entire cryptocurrency community. The spokesperson said in an email:
"Cryptocurrency is an important part of our Borderless Banking philosophy, and we have a clear mission to become the safest and most convenient crypto-asset service provider."
The stablecoin space is currently dominated by Tether’s USDT, which has a market cap of approximately $119 billion, followed by Circle’s USDC, which has a market cap of approximately $35.4 billion. Payments giant PayPal began issuing its own U.S. dollar stablecoin, PYUSD, last August, while blockchain company Ripple is also aiming to join the market in the coming weeks. Cryptocurrency custodian BitGo announced plans to launch a U.S. dollar stablecoin USDS yesterday.
The value of a stablecoin is pegged to a real-world asset, and issuers typically purchase government-issued bonds to support their value, which provides them with a steady source of interest income and thus substantial profits. In its quarterly report released in July, Tether noted that its first-half net profit reached a record $5.2 billion.
This trend may also be driven in part by the release of preliminary guidance on crypto tokens in Europe in the form of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Act (MiCA) regulatory framework.
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