A Private USDC on Aleo: Promising Idea, Open Questions
One of the co-founders of the Aleo blockchain, Howard Wu, has announced a partnership with Circle. As part of this deal, a private version of the USDC stablecoin called USDCx will be launched on Aleo.
It sounds exciting, especially given the recent surge of interest in privacy-focused crypto assets. But will this stablecoin actually be in demand? I have my doubts.
- This is not real USDC in the strict sense. It is not a token that Circle itself is obliged to redeem for dollars upon request by an authorized holder. Instead, USDCx is designed as a separate token backed by USDC.
- Privacy stablecoins are generally much less popular than native privacy coins. On rabbit.io, users can already swap a private version of USDT on the Liquid network. And I can see that demand for this asset is quite low. It exists, but it does not even come close to the demand for Monero, or to USDT on transparent blockchains such as Tron, Ethereum, or Aptos.
- One could argue that Aleo is far more advanced than Liquid. Aleo supports private smart contracts and private decentralized applications, meaning there are many more potential use cases for private stablecoins. In theory, this could drive demand for USDCx. However, Aleo has already been developing a similar project for quite some time - USAD. And so far, I do not see much excitement around it.
Would you personally be interested in using such a stablecoin?
- If yes, it might make sense to pick up a small amount of ALEO in advance - you will need it to pay for gas on the Aleo network. The best ALEO rates are available on rabbit.io.
- If not, we have plenty of other cryptocurrencies available for you.
