Jeremy Allaire founded Circle in 2013 with the vision of creating a protocol for dollars on the internet, enabling instant, global, frictionless value transfer and programmable money via blockchain operating systems.
Allaire views stablecoins like USDC as a realization of full reserve money. The recently passed Clarity for Payment Stablecoins Act codifies this as narrow, non-fractional reserve money, a concept debated since the 1930s Chicago Plan.
USDC is backed by short-duration US Treasury bills and repos, with an average portfolio duration of 13 days, plus cash held at custodial institutions like Bank of New York for immediate liquidity.
USDC use cases range from micropayments for digital objects or AI agent services to large-scale capital markets settlements, offering 24/7 operation, low transaction costs, and global dollar access.
Circle's new blockchain, Arc, is an 'economic operating system' designed for mainstream scaling with a known validator set of financial institutions, USDC as the native token, and built-in privacy primitives.
Polymarket is rolling out a completely rebuilt trading system and a new native stablecoin called Polymarket USD, which is backed one-to-one by USDC rather than directly by dollars.