According to Nick van Eck, the Agora digital dollar won’t be accessible in the US until comprehensive legislation has been implemented.
Nick van Eck, the brilliant son of investment Guru Jan van Eck, is about to introduce a new stablecoin backed by the US dollar following the completion of a $12 million funding round.
According to a Bloomberg story from April 2, crypto veterans Drake Evans and Joe McGrady teamed up with van Eck in October to create Agora, which will introduce the Agora digital dollar with the ticker AUSD. The CEO will be Nick van Eck.
AUSD will have complete cash and U.S. Treasury bills and overnight repo agreements, and a fund for Agora’s reserves will be managed by Jan van Eck, CEO of the $90 billion asset management business VanEck.
According to Kyle DaCrzu, director of digital assets at VanEck, “transparent and trustworthy institutions are necessary to manage the assets of these digital dollars.”
Dragonfly, a digital asset venture capital firm, led the $12 million seed funding round. Other investors included Robot Ventures, Wintermute, Breed, and General Catalyst, where van Eck was formerly a partner.
Joe McGrady was the director of operations of the digital asset management company Galaxy Digital, and Evans had previously held the position of head of loans at the decentralized finance company Frax Finance.
The British Virgin Islands-based stablecoin issuer of Agora is headquartered, but the company’s parent is established in Delaware. Currently, it will only cater to a few markets outside of the United States.
“We’re going to focus primarily on customers outside of the U.S. until there’s federal legislation for stablecoins in the U.S.” van Eck stated to Bloomberg.
Van Eck believes that regions like Southeast Asia and Argentina will gain the most from a digital dollar.
Agora joins a competitive stablecoin market that is dominated by Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC), with a market capitalization of $104.3 billion and $32.5 billion, respectively, according to CoinGecko.
All six of the following stablecoins have market capitalizations of more than $500 million.
Van Eck thinks there is still space for a newcomer, though. Agora will concentrate on forging solid alliances with every participant in the market, including decentralized applications, trading companies, and cryptocurrency exchanges and custodians.
April 2024, Cryptoniteuae
