Santafe News Online

Converge22 featured main stage discussions with athlete, entrepreneur, and cultural icon Serena Williams, economist and policy maker Lawrence H. Summers, and Vitalik Buterin, co-founder and chief scientist of Ethereum. Numerous media representatives were present at the event covering the key developments in the cryptocurrency industry as well. 

Over the course of three days, Converge22 brought together countless stakeholders eager to develop the next big thing in Web3, with as many as 40 sessions, one main stage, and five breakout stages, including Web3-natives and the Web3-curious, traditional finance and DeFi, regulators and policy makers, and charities. One of the attendees of the event was impact-driven Web3 initiative Orbis86’s founder and CEO Soniya Ahuja, a seasoned businesswoman and industry authority. Orbis86 explored the future of non-fungibles and stablecoins at the conference, with a specific focus on the impact of USDC on global economics, as it is the second most popular stablecoin in existence. The event saw more than 100 eminent thought leaders from Web3, finance, technology, and policy in attendance; including Vitalik Buterin, Stani Kulechov, Kevin O’Leary, Sheila Warren, Jai Ramaswamy, Denelle Dixon, Anthony Scaramucci, Anthony Pompliano, Anatoly Yakovenko, and Jai Massari. 

It also witnessed a number of significant announcements that might alter the course of stablecoins forever. Following the debut of USDC on Robinhood in September, Circle and Robinhood entered into a partnership to bring USDC to Customers. It announced a wider agreement to allow users of the new Robinhood wallet to buy and sell USDC as well as access unique in-app instructional modules to earn USDC incentives. 

As part of Circle Impact’s larger initiative to support the promotion of digital financial literacy in underserved and marginalized populations, Circle also unveiled a pilot program for a free Web3 literacy program to students at a number of U.S. historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Circle U is a knowledge base that offers a thorough introduction of blockchain-driven financial services as well as follow-up e-learnings and micro-learnings that address current issues. The curriculum, which has seven modules and evaluations, covers key ideas including Bitcoin and blockchain technology, history of money, Ethereum and tokenization, Web3 and apps, layers and interoperability, policy and regulation, and a Web3 tutorial. Students who excel in the Circle U program will get early access to apply for possible internships and jobs with the organization. 

The USDC issuer also intends to introduce the stablecoin to five other blockchain ecosystems, including Arbitrum, NEAR, Optimism, and Polkadot and make it natively accessible by the end of 2022. The launch of USDC on Cosmos is planned for early 2023. 

Finally, it announced the imminent launch of its new Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol, which would assist developers in creating user interfaces for transferring and conducting native transactions in USDC between blockchains. Currently, users are limited in their ability to move USDC between blockchain ecosystems; they often need to lock up USDC on one chain and build a synthetic “bridged” version of USDC on another, which leads to fragmented liquidity and a difficult user experience. In order to maximize capital efficiency and improve user experience, Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol will enable developers creating wallets, bridges, payment applications, financial services tools, and more to enable users to transmit and trade USDC natively between chains.

Soniya Ahuja, Orbis86 Founder and CEO, shared her insights on the many developments and interactions she had at the event, saying, “USDC has a strong business proposition and aims to provide payment processing as a service using their Web3 stack. Circle has long pushed for stablecoins to be regulated to eliminate gray areas and thus push for mass adoption. Integrting their Web3 stack alongside the treasury and cash backed stablecoin USDC, will skyrocket USDC’s adoption and transaction volume.”