Coinbase brings back the stablecoin bootstrap fund to expand USDC liquidity

Coinbase is reopening its revamped Stablecoin Bootstrap Fund for the first time in nearly six years, aiming to boost stablecoin liquidity across decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols.

Initially, the fund will provide liquidity to Aave, Morpho, Kamino, and Jupiter, with Coinbase Asset Management overseeing the program. It will supply liquidity in USDC and EURC on behalf of Circle, with plans to add other stablecoins.

According to Coinbase’s chief business officer, Shan Aggarwal, the fund’s purpose is to “deploy capital in on-chain protocols to ensure sufficient liquidity for their unique use cases.” The total size of the fund remains undisclosed.

The initial focus is on major DeFi platforms: Aave and Morpho on Ethereum, known for lending and borrowing, and Kamino and Jupiter on Solana, recognized for liquidity provision and trade aggregation.

In a statement to CNBC, Coinbase emphasized that these moves are part of a long-term strategy to guarantee ongoing USDC availability for both established and emerging networks. This effort aims to lower borrowing costs, minimize trading slippage, and support protocol growth.

Coinbase builds on 2019’s success

Coinbase has been leveraging its balance sheet to supercharge the growing DeFi ecosystem. This new fund follows its first Stablecoin Bootstrap Fund, launched in 2019. American stablecoin saw a launch to seed liquidity for the USDC when it was still new to the open, decentralized markets.

This was simple but very effective in the first phase. Compound, a crypto-based lending and borrowing platform, received $1 million in investment from Coinbase, with another $1 million going to dYdX, a derivatives trading venue. There were no grants; they were working capital redeployed to protocol liquidity pools to lower borrowing costs and speed up trade.

The effort didn’t stop there as Coinbase diversified beyond IRL companies last year by including Uniswap (one of the biggest decentralized exchanges) and PoolTogether (a no-loss savings game rooted in the DeFi concept) in the fund.

The $1.1 million Binance Balance Injection process was a further onchain staining of USDC utility in everyday activity. The results were significant. These early liquidity injections helped USDC become a fundamental store of value and vehicle currency throughout DeFi. By guaranteeing that traders and borrowers could always access USDC with frictionless, stable rates, this enabled significant trust and adoption in the fund.

Today, USDC has evolved into a multi-chain powerhouse. It operates across all the previously mentioned ecosystems and Coinbase’s Layer 2 network, processing billions in daily transactions. Integrated into thousands of smart contracts, it underpins borrowing markets with several billion dollars locked at any given time.

Coinbase says the timing of the relaunch matters. “Onchain financial services are at an inflection point,” the company added, arguing that both crypto natives and newcomers are increasingly turning to stablecoin-powered DeFi tools for borrowing, lending, and trading instead of traditional alternatives.

Coinbase aims to support emerging projects

In addition to more established names, Coinbase intends to support smaller or newer protocols. These projects often have difficulty gaining early liquidity, which may hinder their growth potential.

Coinbase said it is seeding the pools and lending markets by injecting them with stablecoins directly to give them a more robust start, at least on its platform. The method would further stabilize interest rates by improving predictability for users of DeFi products.

This purchase will allow us to put together even more resources to accelerate the interest and use we are seeing today,” Aggarwal said. He recommended that the liquidity support be token “agnostic” and decided on a protocol-by-protocol basis.

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