(Bloomberg) -- Circle Internet Financial Ltd. is launching a euro-based version of its popular USDC stablecoin, which has been gaining traction after its closet rival Tether has come under increased scrutiny. 

Euro Coin -- EUROC -- will be available June 30 to institutional customers as a regulated, euro-backed stablecoin, issued under the same full-reserve model as USDC, Circle said in a statement Thursday.

Tether briefly lost its peg to the US dollar last month, sending reverberations across the ecosystem of stablecoins, with investors seeking sanctuary in other crypto assets like USDC that aim to maintain a one-to-one peg with the dollar.

USDC “is much more transparent about its reserve holdings” than USDT, Citigroup strategists said in a note discussing the phenomenon. Last year, the company disclosed that some of the assets backing USDC included commercial paper and corporate bonds but then shifted them into cash and Treasuries.

Likewise, the Euro Coin will be fully-backed by euro-denominated reserves held in the custody of financial institutions within the US regulatory perimeter, beginning with Silvergate Bank, Circle said.

USDC’s market value has grown to roughly $55 billion from $42 billion at year-end, while redemptions in Tether has seen its value drop to about $70 billion from $78 billion, according to pricing from CoinGecko.

A representative for Tether didn’t immediately reply to an email seeking comment.

The growth of USDC has doubled the value of Circle’s planned merger with special purpose acquisition company Concord Acquisition Corp. to $9 billion. However, the date of the deal’s closing has been pushed back multiple times amid heightened scrutiny of SPAC mergers. 

Euro-based stablecoins haven’t taken off to the same extent as those based on the dollar. For instance, the value of Euro Tether, EURT, sits at $215 million, according to data from CoinGecko. 

Still, there is “clear market demand for a digital currency denominated in euros,” said Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and chief executive officer of Circle, in the statement. The euro has a 32% share of global trading after the US dollar’s 88% share, according to the 2019 triennial report from the Bureau of International Settlements. 

Euro Coin will debut on the Ethereum blockchain and Anchorage Digital, Binance.US, BitGo, Bitstamp, CYBAVO, Fireblocks, FTX, Huobi Global and Ledger will support Euro Coin at its launch, Circle said. Governance proposals will be submitted for inclusion on leading community-owned decentralized-finance (DeFi) protocols including Compound, Curve, DFX and Uniswap.

Like USDC, Circle would like to get EUROC on other blockchains in addition to Ethereum in future, said Dante Disparte, Circle’s chief strategy officer and head of global policy, in an interview.

“There’s work to be done still,” Disparte said. But “we think that over time this is an innovation Europeans will support.”

(Updates stablecoin market caps. A previous version corrected USDC’s year-end value.)

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