WhenSignature Bank collapsed in March, many wondered how crypto firms would fare given their reliance on the digital assets-friendly bank—and, in particular, on its real-time payments platform, Signet, which made it easy to convert between fiat currency and crypto.
In an interview with Fortune, Circle CEO and co-founder Jeremy Allaire said that the USDC issuer has turned to Customers Bank and its Customers Bank Instant Token (CBIT) tool, an analogous instant platform to Signet developed by the same financial services firm, Tassat.
As the second-largest stablecoin, USDC relied on Signet’s 24/7 service for its mint-and-burn mechanism, which provided customers with an on-and-off ramp from fiat into the crypto ecosystem, even outside of banking hours. Experts predicted the lack of 24/7 payment networks could cause liquidity issues for stablecoins. But after New York regulators seized Signature in March, Allaire said that Customers’ CBIT platform provided the same instant settlement layer, even as other crypto firms scrambled to find alternatives.
“We want to live in a 24/7, 365 world, and we want to have the liquidity of dollars match the real-time nature of the internet,” Allaire told Fortune.
Even so, Signature’s failure was a signal of concentration risk, and Allaire said the company has been looking for global banking partners that could serve as alternatives to Customers. He also hopes that USDC users will ultimately operate outside of the traditional banking system, keeping their working capital in “on-chain” blockchain treasuries, and not subject to banking hours.
“USDC is 24/7,” he said. “You can settle a direct with a counterparty anywhere in the world, and so it’s far superior to what you get out of your bank.”
Even though Circle has been able to find a settlement partner after Signature, the banking crisis still rocked the U.S.-based firm. As Silicon Valley Bank teetered in March, Circle revealed that it had $3.3 billion—or around 8%—of its reserves held at the bank, instigating a de-pegging from its $1 baseline that shook confidence in the stablecoin. Since March 10, its market cap has decreased by around $13 billion, or nearly 30%.
Because Circle earns a return on the cash held in its reserves, Allaire said that the decrease in deposits has had an impact on the company’s profitability, although it has not affected its operations.
“We don’t control the macro environment,” he said.
“USDC is actually a very redeemable stablecoin—there are other companies that are very hard to redeem,” he added, a likely reference to Tether, the leading stablecoin that has seen its market cap increase by $10 billion over the same time period, despite its notoriously opaque accounting and offshore operations.
Circle is hoping for progress on legislation in the U.S. that will make it easier to use stablecoins, even as the company looks abroad for alternatives, including a pending application in France to become a digital asset provider and electronic money institution. The House Financial Services Committee hosted a hearing last week on a proposed stablecoin bill, which had been drafted last year as a bipartisan effort between then-chair Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and ranking member Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.)
Waters, now the ranking member on the committee, expressed skepticism over the bill during the hearing, stating a desire to start “from scratch” and expressing displeasure at being excluded from legislative conversations by Republicans. Allaire described the ranking Democrat’s rhetoric as a negotiating tactic, saying he was optimistic that discussions would move forward.
“The big macro backdrop is the U.S. leadership role in the global political and economic system is challenged, more so than it has been since post-WWII,” he told Fortune. “It’s got to compete, and it’s got real competition.”
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