BitGo will launch USDS stablecoin, providing liquidity rewards to ecosystem participants

According to CoinDesk, cryptocurrency custodian BitGo announced plans to launch the US dollar stablecoin USDS at the "Token2049" conference in Singapore. The stablecoin will stand out in this crowded market by rewarding institutions that provide liquidity.

USDS will be supported by short-term Treasury bills, Overnight Repo, and cash, making it BitGo's first open participation stablecoin. The company stated that USDS will be launched in January 2025.

BitGo CEO Mike Belshe said in an interview with CoinDesk:

The main reason for launching USDS is that while existing stablecoins have great features, we believe there is an opportunity to create a more open and fair system that promotes innovation, and most importantly, rewards those who construct the network. The true value of stablecoins comes from the people who use them, the liquidity they provide, and the access points for exchange

At present, the stablecoin market is dominated by Tether's USDT, with a market value of approximately $119 billion, followed by Circle's USDC, with a market value of approximately $35.4 billion. Unlike its competitors, BitGo's USDS adopts a reward based approach, incentivizing institutions that provide liquidity to the USDS network by allocating a portion of the rewards generated from stablecoin reserves.

Belshe said, "At the end of each month, we earn some returns from the cash held by the underlying fund, and then we proportionally return these returns to participants based on the custody of the assets." He pointed out that this mechanism may sound similar to dividends, resulting in the entire operation being classified as an investment contract, but the difference is that it does not distribute the returns to end-users, but to institutions that provide liquidity.

Other US dollar stablecoins have also attempted to create income based stablecoins and reward end-users, but as a compromise, they had to exclude the US market, such as the Lift dollar (USDL) issued by Paxos.