Stablecoins appear to be the new ICO. USDC follows on the heels of the Gemini Dollar, and a raft of other stablecoins offered by fully-regulated bank-like entities.

Oddly, there's nothing about regulatory compliance (AML/KYC) or fungibility in the announcement.

Based purely on the article, one might get the idea that USDC can be traded between individuals without any third party oversight and in a censorship-resistant way.

It's highly unlikely this will be the case, given the potential for money laundering.

So... USDC users get a form of digital dollar that's more difficult to use than PayPal and the numerous alternatives because unlike those systems, the user must secure cryptographic material. Alternatively, the user will simply deposit USDC onto an exchange and gain absolutely nothing over PayPal and friends.

Even worse, should the user decide to make an on-chain USDC transaction, a permanent public record will be logged on the Ethereum block chain, which can be used in various ways with any information lost by Circle/Coinbase due to the inevitable data breaches (legal and illegal) to come.

I'm all for innovation in this space, but caveat emptor couldn't be more relevant.