Circle, the United States-based issuer of the popular stablecoin USD Coin (USDC), is planning big moves into Asian crypto markets. Meanwhile PlanB sticks to his price-predicting guns.

USDC is the second-most widely used stablecoin after Tether (USDT) and was founded by the CENTRE Consortium, bootstapped by both Circle and crypto exchange beast Coinbase.

And now Circle is now looking to expand the stablecoin’s reach, choosing Singapore as an Asian market regional headquarters. The company is also setting up an investment arm called Circle Ventures, with an initial focus on a Japanese yen stablecoin.

Circle’s CEO Jeremy Allaire, speaking with Bloomberg, said that the company sees substantial opportunities within Asia, which he believes is ready to adopt stablecoins in borrowing and lending markets.

Allaire also said that the inflation environment globally and within Asia should trigger markets to move to stablecoins in a search for yield. If so, the firm and its interest-yielding product, Circle Yield, could be set to benefit.

“While a lot of people want to focus on people hedging by buying Bitcoin directly,” said Allaire, “we think for stewards of capital within corporations and corporate treasurers and so on, that an allocation into stablecoin yield is actually going to be really, really attractive.”

Circle aims to make USDC one of the first global stablecoins to be licensed in Singapore, and is working with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to kickstart the adoption of USDC for the country’s major businesses.

And speaking of USDC and its yield-staking power, prominent Canadian businessman Kevin “Mr Wonderful” O’Leary is right into it as an inflation hedge…

 

PlanB sticks by November and December BTC predictions

“Moonvember” is still on for the pseudonymous analyst PlanB, who is standing by his end-of-month “worst-case scenario Bitcoin price prediction estimates. He’s been an eerily accurate price-target predictor so far, especially over the past three months.

And now, the famed creator of the Bitcoin Stock to Flow (s2F) model has confirmed that he believes US$98K by November’s end, and US$135K by the year’s end, are still achievable goals.

With about two weeks left in the penultimate month of the year, and Bitcoin currently hovering just under US$66K, it’s fair to say, the OG crypto has got some work to do. Still, 40-50 per cent gains for BTC in a matter of weeks… it’s happened before…

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