Crypto Lender Dharma Adds Support for USDC

Crypto lender Dharma has begun supporting the peer-to-peer lending of USDC, The Block reported on May 22.

Before now, the San Francisco-based company only supported Dai, a stablecoin backed by ether (ETH) that has been regarded as too risky by some investors due to its design, according to Max Bronstein, the company’s business development manager.

As USDC is backed by the United States dollar, Dharma hopes that it will be able to attract mainstream investors to its decentralized platform.

Bronstein told The Block that adding USDC could enhance the platform’s liquidity, adding:

“People who need to get in and out of cryptocurrency easily without getting a lot of price slippage is where we see a lot of USDC demand.”

The new service will allow users to borrow USDC as long as they put up 1.5x the value of the loan up as collateral. Loan terms are 90 days, and Dharma claims lenders subsequently receive interest of 8%.

Dharma officially launched on April 8, with the aim to enable to the wider public to use crypto in daily life to earn interest, pay bills or take out loans.

In February, the company raised $7 million from big investors, including Coinbase Ventures.

The USDC was launched by major crypto exchange and wallet Coinbase in partnership with Circle back in December 2018. Both before and since then, more stablecoins have entered the crypto market, with a recent example of Swiss stock exchange SIX’s ongoing development of a stablecoin pegged to the Swiss franc.