Circle’s USD Coin will launch natively on the Celo blockchain, the Celo Foundation has announced. Minting USDC on the blockchain will boost Celo’s use cases for real-world assets and enhance USDC’s convertibility into fiat currencies.

USDC will join Celo’s native proof-of-stake governance token, CELO, as the blockchain transitions from an Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible layer-1 chain to an Ethereum layer-2 protocol. The Celo community will vote in an upcoming proposal on making USDC the gas currency for the ecosystem.

Mento Lab already issues the cUSD stablecoin on Celo, as well as other stablecoins such as the cEuro, cREAL (pegged to the Brazilian real) and eXOF (pegged to the West African CFA franc).

Celo positions itself as part of the regenerative finance movement and is carbon-neutral and mobile-first. It emphasizes mobile technology to improve the user experience in emerging economies. The Opera web platform launched its MiniPay wallet on Celo in September for African users with mobile phones. 

Circle has been expanding its global reach. It was granted conditional registration as a virtual assets service provider in France in December. A month earlier, it partnered with Japanese financial services firm SBI to introduce USDC in that country. It has partnered with global payments processor Visa since 2020 and expanded cooperation using USDC issued on Ethereum and Solana in September.

The central bank of the United Arab Emirates conducted its first cross-border digital dirham transfer using the mBridge central bank digital currency platform on Jan. 29.

The 50 million dirhams cross-border CBDC transfer was sent to China using the multi-CBDC mBridge platform, according to Gulf News. The chairman of the board of the Central Bank of the UAE, Sheikh Mansour, conducted the CBDC transfer on the occasion of the golden jubilee celebration of the establishment of the central bank.

Project mBridge was introduced in 2021 by the central monetary authorities of China, Hong Kong, Thailand and the UAE in partnership with the Bank for International Settlement. It is the only international collaborative partnership that involves China. The project completed its first pilot in September 2022.

The mBridge platform has onboarded multiple commercial banks from each participating member nation to work on the infrastructure and technology. 

The mBridge ledger platform uses single-platform, direct-access infrastructure to make real-time, peer-to-peer transactions with the HotStuff+ consensus mechanism. The CBDC platform allows faster transfers of each participant country’s national digital currency.

One member of the United States Congress also took note of mBridge’s advancements. Representative Maxine Waters, who is a member of the House Financial Services Committee, voiced her worries about the project’s potential to be used as a cover for avoiding economic penalties.

After the popularity of blockchain technology and the use of digital currencies on the distributed ledger, governments worldwide started exploring the use of blockchain technology to create a national digital currency issued by the central bank.

According to a BIS report, nearly 90% of central banks worldwide are looking to adopt CBDCs. Out of these, 11 countries have launched a CBDC, 15 are in the pilot stage, and 26 are in the development phase, according to the CBDC tracker from the Atlantic Council.

The Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee of the European Parliament has voted for measures requiring banks holding cryptocurrencies to set aside a punitive amount of capital.

The European Parliament announced the committee had voted overwhelmingly in favour of amendments to its Capital Requirements Regulation and Capital Requirements Directive applying to banks holding crypto. According to a draft law, banks would be required to hold a “risk-weighted exposure amount” of up to 1,250% of capital based on exposure to crypto.

The legislative institution said the changes were in line with those from the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, the body responsible for international banking standards. The group released consultation papers in 2019, 2021, and 2022 which explored dividing crypto assets into groups and recommending how banks should address potential risks.

Members of the European Parliament also want banks to disclose their exposure to crypto-assets and crypto assets services as well as a specific description of their risk management policies related to crypto-assets, said the legislative body. The Commission was invited to submit a legislative proposal by June 2023 on a dedicated prudential treatment for exposures to crypto-assets.