Forbes: Stellar Partners with Wirex to Launch 26 Fiat-Backed Stablecoins

Stablecoins are becoming more and more popular in the crypto space. They can be tied either to fiat currencies or other physical assets, such as gold. Recently, Tether has started bringing its USDT onto the Tron blockchain.

Now, Forbes reports that UK-based crypto startup Wirex is launching as many as 26 new stablecoins, backed by various fiat currencies, on the Stellar blockchain.

USD-back stablecoins are inconvenient

As per Forbes, which cites Wirex co-founder Jed McCaleb, stablecoins can indeed change the world and the crypto industry, because they are much less volatile than decentralized crypto. So users can exchange and send them to each other without losing value.

“Stablecoins have the potential to transform the payments space. We’re excited to be working with Wirex to launch its first stablecoins to help make money more fluid and open to everyone.”

However, another Wirex co-founder, Pavel Matveev, says that since the majority of stablecoins are tied to the USD, they are good for trading on crypto exchanges, but it is hard to use them for trans-border payments. These stablecoins are not scalable and they do not support local fiat money.

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Stellar-based stablecoins

Since Wirex focuses on payments, international and not just local ones, they have decided to create some stablecoins for international transactions.

“We want to bank the unbanked, democratize access to financial services and facilitate the integration of the burgeoning token economy,” said Mateev.

“Local currency-pegged stablecoins don’t require a local liquidity provider, and can be easily and affordably exchanged to the equivalent local fiat currency.”

Firstly, Stellar has added its own XLM coin to the list of cryptos that Wirex works with.

The aforementioned stablecoins based on Stellar will be launched later.

You can now buy, store, exchange and spend Stellar Lumens (XLM) on the Wirex platform, making it the 5th @CoinMarketCap Top 10 currency to join Wirex, bringing our digital token offering to nine overall ? @StellarOrg #BTC #LTC #XRP #ETH #WAVES #WLO #DAI #NANO #XLM pic.twitter.com/9tC4DyOwv6

— Wirex (@wirexapp) April 25, 2019

Matveev says that Wirex-launched stablecoins will be accepted via Visa cards by more than 2 mln retailers and 5,000 corporate customers located in around 130 countries around the globe.