Circle announces new partner Cross River Bank, $3.3 billion crisis averted

After the weekend's USDC redemption and unpegging crisis, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire announced in a post that the $3.3 billion held at Silicon Valley Bank will be fully redeemable, and introduced another partner, Cross River Bank, to handle the minting and redemption of USDC for customers.

Who is Cross River Bank?

Cross River Bank is a FDIC-insured commercial bank registered in New Jersey, emphasizing the application of compliance and traditional banking regulations to innovative fintech and financial services companies. Since 2014, they have been using the Ripple protocol to provide cross-border remittance services to their corporate and individual banking clients.

Ripple is a cryptocurrency company that focuses on providing cross-border payment solutions for financial institutions. RippleNet utilizes blockchain technology to offer a decentralized payment network, enabling financial institutions to conduct cross-border payments in real-time and securely.

Due to Signature Bank, a previous partner of Circle, being taken over on a Sunday evening, Circle was unable to mint or redeem USDC via its SigNet system, which has had a significant impact on its operations.

Circle quickly found another partner bank, Cross River Bank, and seamlessly launched services on March 13th. This incident, where a traditional financial institution's issue affected the cryptocurrency industry, albeit causing a temporary disruption to USDC, Circle seemed well-prepared and managed to come out unscathed in the end!