Universal Protocol Alliance announces Universal Dollar

Cryptocurrency firms and blockchain pioneers coalition the Universal Protocol Alliance has announced its stablecoin, Universal Dollar (UPUSD).

The announcement was made at the San Francisco Blockchain Week event.

The alliance includes Brave, Cred, Uphold, Blockchain at Berkeley and FBG Capital.

According to a press release CoinReport received from BlockPR, the alliance’s PR firm, the UPUSD is an entirely transparent digital asset that is collateralized 1-to-1 with U.S. dollar to be held at U.S. domiciled, FDIC-insured banks.

Designed particularly to gain interest of the next 100 million users into crypto, the UPUSD enables investors all over the world to get higher yields on deposits and more affordable credit than available from several conventional banks.

The UPUSD allows users to have access to a quarter-billion-dollar line of credit, pays a yearly rate of interest of between 2 and 5 percent and allows for holders to be eligible for flexible loans with single-digit rates of interest.

The digital currency is supported by reserve management created by Uphold, the transparent digital money platform that has handled about $4 billion in transactions and publishes its liabilities and assets in real-time.

Uphold CEO JP Thieriot said in the news release we received, “This is crypto finally delivering the goods to the mass market. Worldwide, over 2.5 billion people with bank accounts are likely to be interested in cheaper credit and a higher yield on their deposits. This isn’t about imagined ‘utility’ for a rarified use case. The Universal Dollar should have broad appeal to a wide array of people and, for some in developing economies, could be life changing.”

He added, “Without thousands of employees, miles of high-rent real estate and the baggage of legacy systems, companies in our industry have a big structural advantage over traditional banks. This advantage has to accrue to the benefit of the mass market, or our industry will remain the exclusive domain of technophiles and speculators.”

The UPUSD has several of the benefits and user safeguards associated with traditional financial assets, including:

• Inheritability – a beneficiary, who can “call” the asset on account dormancy, may be nominated by users.
• Safety – completely reserved, built-in loss recovery and optional custody of private keys.
• Yield – can earn up to five percent every year on the value of digital holdings.
• Lessened exchange risk – because of a “detachable” wallet that allows “self custody” at exchanges.
• Credit – flexible borrowing on competitive terms, secured by the value of digital assets.

Thieriot explained, “The Universal Dollar should help crypto and blockchain jump the rails, creating mainstream financial products that allow virtually anyone, anywhere* to buy digital assets, and then borrow against them, as well as earn interest on fiat-stable deposits.”

Using any supported digital asset held at Uphold to earn interest* and make the user eligible for a secured line of credit is part of this initiative. 

Cred co-founder and president Dan Schatt commented, “Traditionally, you’ve had to own a home to have access to cheap credit products, such as the American ‘HELOC’. Now, a new generation can access similarly convenient credit without such a high bar and through simple ownership of digital assets.”

The firms in the alliance announced earlier this year a transparent reserve standard that will support a Universal Tokens family seeking to offer “safer,” more practical and more “spendable” types of major digital currencies. Together with the UPUSD, the Universal Protocol Alliance is soon going to release Universal Bitcoin (UPBTC) as an ERC-20-compatible, completely reserved and interoperable coin.

The UPUSD can be used to earn interest with Uphold Earn and to get flexible lines of credit with Uphold Borrow. More information is available at https://join.uphold.com/.

Image via press kit on Uphold’s website