2018-10-10 21:30 |
Global professional services firm PwC has partnered with decentralized lending platform Cred to boost trust in the cryptocurrency space and bring in more traders by advancing stablecoin technology.
PwC consists of several different financial firms and spans across 158 countries. The company currently boasts over 200,000 employees serving in quality assurance, advisory and tax service positions.
Founded by former PayPal technologists Dan Schatt and Lu Hua, Cred seeks to offer open access to cryptocurrency-based credit options, regardless of where the seeker may reside. With offices in Munich, San Francisco, Shanghai, Sydney and Singapore, the company has utilized the blockchain to secure over $250 million in lending capital for its clients.
Speaking with Bitcoin Magazine, Schatt describes the partnership as a milestone in the crypto industry. “This is one of the first times PwC has formed a joint business relationship with a company focused on the blockchain and crypto,” he explains.
“We’re looking to help people borrow crypto the way they would fiat and treat it like any other asset class. If you go to any bank, it won’t offer crypto loans because it doesn’t acknowledge crypto as a real asset class. This is bad because we need new ways of looking at custody and lending, and this is the first time a big accounting firm has said it would work with a company in this space.”
One of the biggest problems facing cryptocurrency is volatility. Schatt says that volatility exists because the crypto market lacks liquidity, and trading can frequently result in price swings. Many institutional investors refuse to get involved out of concern that their funds will disappear due to crypto’s consistent price drops.
Several have expressed that they would be less worried if virtual assets were tied to fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar, making them stablecoins. The trouble is that such currencies require a reserve ledger built for fully decentralized assets that can provide value substantiation and transparency.
PwC is seeking to provide education to both investors and startups alike that discusses how this technology can advance. In addition, PwC will offer insight on factors ranging from security and risk management to governance and control to potentially improve upon present industry practices.
Schatt is confident further development of stablecoins will increase the level of transparency in the crypto market and boost the economy by getting more mainstream investors involved.
“If you can get a stablecoin that’s very transparent and tied to USD, for example, that’s a very powerful confidence booster,” he states. “Imagine, also, that you can get out of a rapidly depreciating currency and get into something that’s giving you a return on your money between two and five percent. That’s truly powerful.”
Cred is also a founding member of the Universal Protocol (UP) Alliance. Supporters of the organization include Blockchain at Berkley and Brave, whose CEO Brendan Eich recently penned a letter to a U.S. Senate committee asking that GDPR-like standards be implemented in the United States.
The Alliance presently serves as a major platform for the creation, management and distribution of stablecoins, and works to push mass adoption by introducing new kinds of safeguards that make virtual currencies more convenient and practical. These tactics include inheritability, private key recovery and even loss assurance.
Schatt says that lending in crypto is precisely what allows Cred to garner so many funds for its clients. Several traditional lenders enforce long and complicated processes when acquiring money for customers. In addition, factors like interest rates are always going to differ depending on the fiat currency being issued and the individual terms of the lender.
He explains, however, that while credit and background checks are inevitable, Cred’s procedure for securing capital is simpler in that cryptocurrencies possess the same properties no matter where you are. Thus, the interest rates for Cred’s loans do not change, and people have more opportunity to secure their money and pay it back with ease.
“If you own a home, you have to value it in all kinds of different ways, but bitcoin has the same properties no matter what, so we can potentially offer the same level of interest to all customers,” he assures.
Bitcoin Magazine also reached out to PwC for comment, but did not receive a response.
This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.
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