It’s early days for the global dollar (USDG), a stablecoin that debuted in November, but a thousand firms could join the group that helps popularize the token in return for a share of the yield earned on reserve assets, according to crypto exchange Kraken, one of the founding partners.
USDG, whose other backers include trading platform Robinhood (HOOD), stablecoin issuer Paxos, crypto investor Galaxy Digital and crypto bank Anchorage Digital, recently welcomed 19 new joiners, many of them crypto native firms. Banks and large traditional finance firms are also lining up, Kraken’s consumer business lead Mark Greenberg said.
“There are 25-plus partners now, and I hope in another month, we’ll be announcing the next 25, and then the next 25. So from 25 to 50 to 1,000,” Greenberg said in an interview. “I’m very excited about some of the partners coming up in traditional finance and in crypto — big names on both sides. We’re talking to a lot of banks and I think a few will be coming online soon.”
The changing dollar stablecoin landscape has been dominated by two big players: Tether’s USDT, far and away the largest at a market cap of over $150 billion, and Circle’s USDC which commands a circulation of just over $60 billion. USDG has just $276 million, making it the 24th-largest stablecoin in a CoinGecko ranking.
Paxos, the New York-regulated stablecoin specialist underpinning USDG, originally offered a contender to USDC and USDT in the form of tie-up with exchange giant Binance, but the partnership was discontinued for regulatory reasons.
Greenberg pointed out USDG is a “true consortium,” and Paxos is a distribution partner, albeit with some particular administrative duties.
“We are building a decentralized community around the stablecoin, with yield that goes back to everybody,” Greenberg said. “Some of us are founding partners, and if we were a property company, Paxos would be the property management. They make sure that the licenses are in place and that the treasuries are handled properly and that the minting is done. But it’s on all of us to be equal partners in making the global dollar network a success.”
Driving the consortium’s growth is the offer of yield, which both incentivizes firms to join up, and also reimagines stablecoins as part of the wider financial system, Greenberg said. It’s also how USDG plans to challenge the dominance of Tether and Circle.
“I believe in decentralization over centralization. I believe in giving the value back to users, and USDG is doing that in a way that you can’t with Circle or Tether today,” said Greenberg. “Tether and Circle make a lot of money. In banking you give your deposits and they do things with it, but you get almost nothing back. But stablecoins shouldn’t be like that.”
Kraken moves a lot of money around the world and naturally the firm has been using USDG, eating its own dog food, in business innovation parlance.
“We use global dollars and the USDG all over the world,” Greenberg said. “You send a wire and it can take four or five days and get stuck in some random bank along the way. That’s already changing really fast. And you see players like Visa and MasterCard and others come to the table and stablecoins start to play that role in a much bigger way.”
Kraken’s clients are also taking advantage of earning up to 4.1% on U.S. dollars in every country in the world by putting their money in USDG, Greenberg added.
“If you’re in the U.S., maybe that’s not that exciting, because there are other ways to do that. But if you’re in Argentina, or if you’re in Canada, where there are no U.S. dollar accounts and earning 4.1% is unheard of, it’s a very cool opportunity to make that happen.”