After announcing their own stablecoin last week (Ticker USDC) Jeremy Allaire and other members of the senior Circle team conducted a live audio AMA (Ask Me Anything) on the Whalepool TeamSpeak server. It was a lively discussion with the Whalepool traders, who pulled no punches in the questions they asked the Poloniex exchange bosses.

Big plans for Poloniex

Today Poloniex has a modest $30-$40 million daily trading volume, hardly much when compared to market leader Binance, who is trading well over $1 billion volume most days. When Circle acquired Poloniex for $400 million in late February, the announcement acted as a mini catalyst as the crypto market quickly gained $50 billion in total market cap.

This came from a wave of excitement about the staggering valuation given to Poloniex, an exchange well outside the top 20 in volume rankings. In the days after the announcement, the crypto space was awash with rumours of what exchange/company would be bought next and at what price. That hype soon deflated along with the daily trading volume at Poloniex from its $100 million+ daily peak in February.

Circle said that they had big plans for Poloniex; they talked about an overhaul to the exchange that included: the customer service, the assets listed, new IOS and Android apps and, most notably, security tokens, “through the USDC liquidity pool that can enable a stable on and off ramp for capital”.

The Goldman link

When asked about the influence of Goldman Sachs, Allaire said: “Goldman was just one of many to invest in our Series C round in 2015, they don’t even have a board seat, and we have many other influential investors onboard like the CICC” who were dubbed the “Goldman Sachs of China”.

USDC – Circle’s ERC20 stablecoin

After questioning on why Ethereum and ERC20 for their stablecoin, Circle defended the decision by saying “it has the widest adopted standers, highest interoperability and more users than any other blockchains out there”. They weren’t overly concerned about the Ethereum blockchains ability to scale and muttered the usual lines about “the ability to port over onto other chains if needed”.

Circle said that their stablecoin will be backed 1:1 with fiat in audited account that will be checked monthly by Grant Thornton. “We act as one the largest market makers today and we will do the same with USDC”. Circle report that they usually conduct $2 billion a month volume on their Crypto OTC Desk. I am sure this liquidity flow will come in handy to keep USDC pegged at 1$

Part two to follow…Stay tuned for more.