Announcing the Coinbase USDC Bootstrap Fund
How Coinbase is contributing to the emerging DeFi ecosystem with USDC
In 2018, the Centre Consortium — which includes Coinbase and Circle — launched USDC, a stable, secure, and transparent stablecoin. Since then, it has become one of the world’s most popular and trusted stablecoins.
To encourage further growth in decentralized finance (DeFi), Coinbase is announcing the USDC Bootstrap Fund. The Fund will support developers building DeFi protocols by investing USDC directly in the protocol. Unlike more traditional investments, this money is tied up in a smart contract protocol with return provided by a counterparty (a borrower or taker).
In our talks with countless developers, we consistently heard how hard it was to get liquidity for a new DeFi protocol. With the Bootstrap Fund, we aim to make it easier for developers to launch their protocol and help them to create healthy, liquid marketplaces by leveraging USDC. The USDC Bootstrap Fund is separate from Coinbase Ventures, the venture arm of Coinbase which has made 50+ traditional equity investments in projects across the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
Through the investment of USDC, our goal over time is to support DeFi teams in making their products safer, and more reliant and accessible than existing financial products. We view this as just one first step for how Coinbase will support DeFi. In the coming months, we’ll share our learnings and future integrations with the community.
We are also announcing today our first two investments: Compound and dYdX. Coinbase has added 1 MM in USDC to Compound, a money market protocol. We will also add 1 MM in USDC to dYdX, a margin trading protocol and open trading platform for crypto assets. In both cases, the USDC tokens are available to borrow by any counterparty willing to provide crypto collateral and pay a floating interest rate.
We encourage all DeFi developers and smart contract projects that want to integrate USDC to apply for the USDC Bootstrap Fund. To apply, please fill out this form.
Authors: Nemil Dalal (Twitter), Jacob Horne (Twitter), Daniel Que (Twitter)
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Announcing the Coinbase USDC Bootstrap Fund was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
