5 Biggest Digital Currencies in the World

4. USD Coin

Market Capitalization as of August 12: $54 billion

USD Coin is a stable-coin whose value is tied to the US dollar. Besides Tether, it is one of the most popular stable-coins on the market. USD Coin is managed by a consortium named Centre, which includes members from popular crypto exchange Coinbase. The management team of the coin claims that each individual USD Coin is backed by a reserve dollar or other approved, but otherwise unspecified, investments. The management also uses the term “fully reserved assets” to describe these investments. 

USD Coin was launched in 2018. Payment giants like Visa allow the use of the coin for crypto transactions on their network. USD Coin uses the same network as Ethereum. USD Coins are tokenized when a user sends US dollars to the bank account of a coin issuer. The issuer then makes a smart contract and issues the same number of USD Coins as the dollars. These coins are then sent to the user. The dollars are held in reserve against these coins. For converting these coins back into dollars, this process is reversed.