Hassan Maishera
TL;DR
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Circle will no longer allow consumer accounts to mint stablecoins.
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Users who wish to mint stablecoins will have to turn to other platforms.
Circle Stops Consumer Accounts From Minting Stablecoins
Stablecoin issuer Circle announced in a blog post on Tuesday that it is discontinuing support for consumer Circle Mint accounts. This means that consumer accounts will no longer mint stablecoins on the Circle platform. The company said;
"Circle is phasing out support for legacy consumer accounts and has notified individual consumers of this decision. Account closures do not apply to business or institutional Circle Mint accounts."
The stablecoin issuer added that it would also end support for consumer accounts with zero balances, which will be closed on Nov. 30. This means that users who wish to mint Circle’s stablecoins, like USDC and EURC, will need to turn to other platforms.
While commenting on this latest development, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire wrote, said;
"Lots of noise about Circle limiting individuals from using Circle Mint. There is nothing new here. We haven't allowed individuals to open Circle accounts in years and have been institutions only for years as well. We have tremendous retail partners all around the world, including our strategic partner Coinbase who offers excellent retail access to USDC without fees and always 1:1. The only change is that for a few thousand individual user accounts that were still open with us, we are no longer going to support those accounts. Please ignore the FUD, conspiracy theories, etc."
Lots of noise about @circle limiting individuals from using Circle Mint. There is nothing new here. We haven't allowed individuals to open Circle accounts in years, and have been institution only for years as well. We have tremendous retail partners all around the world,…
— Jeremy Allaire (@jerallaire) October 31, 2023
Tether, Circle’s biggest rival, still supports individual consumer accounts. However, individuals need to have a minimum limit of $100,000 to operate those accounts.
Tether still supports individual accounts
While speaking with The Block, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said,
"Tether allows both individuals and corporate customers to participate in its primary market for issuances and redemptions. Tether maintains a minimum limit of 100k USD for issuances and redemptions, allowing the Tether compliance team to focus on professional participants, enforcing deeper due diligence on KYC/AML compared to its competitors."
Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC are the two leading stablecoins in the crypto space, with a market cap of $84 billion and $24 billion, respectively.
