Circle's USDC Will Not Support an Ethereum Proof-of-Work Fork

By Tom Farren

Stablecoin provider Circle announced its intentions to fully support Ethereum’s shift to a proof-of-stake (PoS) chain following the highly-anticipated merge event slated for September 19.

“We understand the responsibility we have for the Ethereum ecosystem and businesses, developers and end users that depend on USDC, and we intend to do the right thing,” read the announcement.

The firm’s stablecoin USDC is currently the second-largest stablecoin, commanding a market capitalization of $54.2 billion. 

Circle’s announcement comes amid growing speculation that the merge event will also lead to another Ethereum fork that would keep the mining-intensive PoW consensus mechanism alive and well. 

Following the merge, miners will be swapped for so-called validators in which users stake 32 Ethereum to validate transactions on the network.

Any groups with a hefty amount of Ethereum mining hardware would thus be made obsolete. 

Influential Chinese Ethereum miner Chandler Guo has primarily led this charge, according to a recent Twitter post. The suggested fork would even come with a new cryptocurrency called ETHPOW. 

BitMEX has also just launched a futures contract that would allow speculators to leverage trade ETHPOW. 

As for Circle, the firm is staying the course.

“While we don’t speculate on the possibility of forks post Ethereum Mainnet merge, USDC as an Ethereum asset can only exist as a single valid ‘version,’ and as stated previously, our sole plan is to fully support the upgraded Ethereum PoS chain,” Circle’s announcement read.

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