Today, Circle Internet Financial (“Circle”) released the first attestation report by accounting firm Grant Thornton LLP for its USD Coin (USDC).
When Circle launched USDC on 26 September 2018, it promised transparency:
“USDC is an open source project that works within US money transmission laws, uses established banks and auditors and runs on blockchain technology via smart contracts. This is true financial and operational transparency.”
Furthermore, it promised regular monthly reports from accounting services firm Grant Thornton LLP “on the US dollar reserves that back the USDC tokens in circulation.” (Grant Thornton LLP is “the U.S. member firm of Grant Thornton International Ltd, one of the world’s leading organizations of independent audit, tax and advisory firms.”) And true to its word, today, Circle released the first such report for the month of October 2018.
The report, which is titled (“INDEPENDENT ACCOUNTANT’S REPORT”), is addressed to the Board of Directors of Circle Internet Financial, Inc.
It says that Grant Thornton has “examined” Circle’s assertion that the “Reserve Account Information” in the Reserve Account Report as of 31 October 31 2018 (11:59 PM UTC) “is correctly stated, based on the criteria set forth in the Reserve Account Report.”
The management of Circle says in the Reserve Account Report that the following information is correct (as of the aforementioned date and time):
- There are 127,408,827 USDC tokens “issued and outstanding”
- USD held in custody accounts: $127,412,240.89
This means, of course, that as of the report’s date and time, “the issued and outstanding USDC tokens do not exceed the balance of the US Dollars held in custody accounts.”
This is what the Reserve Account Report prepared by Circle’s management team looks like:
And for the cynics out there who might be thinking that an attestation report is not the same thing as a full audit, Cameron Winklevoss, the Co-Founder and President of Gemini, which offers its own GUSD stablecoin, had this to say on the subject last month:
Again, you/they don't understand what an audit actually is — you/they are loosely using the term without understanding that one can't perform an “audit” on a stablecoin. You must use an “attestation.” Sophisticated market participants understand this and get it. Full stop.
— Cameron Winklevoss (@winklevoss) October 17, 2018
All Images Courtesy of Circle Internet Financial
