coinedition.com
Twitter influencer BitBoy warns the community about the circulation of $USDC, claiming that it is a central bank digital currency (CBDC). As part of Circle’s CEO Jeremy Allaire’s announcement, the U.S. government would support the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela led by Juan Guaidó. Circle, a fintech exchange, is using USDC, a dollar-pegged stablecoin, to distribute funds to medical workers in Venezuela.
You guys realize the CBDC is already here, right? It’s $USDC. And every time you are using it you are pushing it forward.
— Ben Armstrong (@Bitboy_Crypto) December 26, 2022
I guarantee minimum 75% of people who push back on CBDCs use USDC.
Venezuela’s national assembly declared Guaidó as the country’s acting president after denouncing Maduro’s regime as usurpatory. According to Jeremy Allaire, co-founder of Circle, “penalties were imposed when that occurred, and funds that belonged to the government were seized.”
The U.S. Treasury Department has been attempting to distribute funds directly to Venezuelan citizens, but Maduro’s attempts to obstruct the distribution of these funds have caused challenges. A peer-to-peer payment startup called Airtm has been trying to address this problem.
Allaire would not say which branch of the American government is collaborating with Circle and Airtm, but he did say that Circle has been granted permission to transmit money via USDC.
According to the Circle’s blog post, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve deposit money that the United States has confiscated into a bank account connected to the Guaidó administration in the United States. This account transforms the money into USDC, which Circle then distributes to Airtm. Airtm then distributes USDC to its mobile digital wallet users. As reported by Allaire, Airtm currently has half a million users in Venezuela.
The owner of the fintech firm also stated that:
This, I believe, marks really a first where the U.S. is effectively executing a global foreign policy objective with stablecoins for foreign aid because the existing dollar banking system can’t do the job.
The USDC has become more stable than the bolivar, the official currency of Venezuela, so Venezuelans can spend dollars using them. In only 2020, the bolivar’s inflation rate was 2,358.5%.