Attendees of the Finance Magnates London Summit may have noticed that Yoni Assia, CEO of eToro, slipped a rather important announcement into the company's presentation.
“Will eToro issue its own stablecoin in 2019?--absolutely yes!”, he said. The exact timeline for the release of the Stablecoin is not yet known. eToro did not respond to requests for further commentary from Finance Magnates before the time of publication.
The announcement comes near the tail end of a busy year for eToro. Among other things over the last several months, the company formed a major advertising partnership with several Premier Football Leagues, and announced the creation of a "non-speculative" cryptocurrency that will pay interest to individuals who "have less."
Stablecoins Continue to Grow in Popularity
A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency that is collateralized or “pegged” to a real-world fiat currency or another asset, usually one a one-to-one basis. In other words, for every 1 StableCoinX, there is 1 USD or 1 EUR. Different units of other assets (i.e., gold, real estate) are pegged to stablecoins on a pre-decided basis.
Stablecoin issuance has been one of the more significant trends in exchanges throughout the latter half of 2018. Tether, the world’s first and formerly most-popular stablecoin, has come under fire over the course of the last two years because of its failure to adequately address concerns over its lack of an audit. Additionally, the price of Tether fluctuated quite a bit last month, leading some to question the stability of this ‘stablecoin.’
A number of other publicly available stablecoins have been put onto the market--TrueUSD, Paxos Standard, and Centre are just a few.
“Will eToro issue its own stablecoin in 2019? – absolutely yes!” #regulation #cryptocurrencies #londonsummit18 #stablecoin @eToro pic.twitter.com/l2vNTLz8ae
— Finance Magnates (@financemagnates) November 14, 2018
Additionally, cryptocurrency exchanges are beginning to create their own stablecoins more often. Circle and Coinbase launched the USDC; Gemini recently issued the Gemini Dollar.
