Goldman Sachs Completely Embraces Cryptocurrency With Its Own Coin

Despite the initial and even continuing skepticism of its CEO with regards to cryptocurrency, it would seem that Goldman Sachs has finally given in after getting bit by the crypto bug. Though, it’s also worth noting that the financial institution is doing so using methods might go against some of the central concepts behind decentralization.

Simply called Coins, this new crypto offering comes via the Goldman Sachs payment startup, Circle. In a recent blog post, the startup announced the existence of the cryptocurrency and provided details on what it’s all about. Basically, it’s a digital equivalent of a dollar with a crypto-sounding name.

The biggest difference between Coin and a true cryptocurrency like Bitcoin is the matter of stability. Goldman Sachs basically wants to make the price of its own offering to fluctuate a lot less than other crypto offerings have done over the last several months.

“Circle USDC (USD Coin) is a solution that enables customers to purchase and use USDC fiat tokens for payments and trading in the crypto ecosystem. USDC provides a full reserve US dollar-backed stablecoin, and is based on the open source fiat stablecoin framework developed and governed by CENTRE, which will provide independent oversight of Circle’s offering,” Circle details in its announcement post.

As CNBC notes, the value of Coin will be intrinsically tied to the value of the U.S. Dollar. This makes it significantly less volatile than its purer counterparts, which begs the question as to what the point of it is, in the first place.

Cryptocurrency, by its nature, is not supposed to be centralized. This is a foreign concept to an institution like Goldman Sachs, or more traditional investors, for that matter. This is likely why the institution is investing as much as it has been in cryptocurrency, which is to control as much of the market as it can and profit from it in whatever way possible.