
USDC releases 4th audit report that looks promising, the auditor's independency is questioned.
Stablecoin, USD Coin (USDC) just released another audit report that shows the amount of USD reserves backing the coin.
Published on February 15th by auditor firm, Grant Thornton, the report confirms that the company behind, Circle has sufficient reserve to back the token on a 1:1 basis, as reported by Coingape.
Circle’s dollar deposits amount to USD307,848,312, which is 54,588 dollars in excess of the numbers of issued USDC tokens of 307,793,724.
Compared to the last report by the same auditor, both the token and USD reserve amount have seen a pretty significant growth of around $56 million.
The report seems “fine”, at least until a Twitter user, @ItsIcoScamAlert posts a tweet pointing at the recruitment of Mark Kelly, a former Technology Risk Consultant at Grant Thornton as Coinbase's UK compliance head.
First Goldman Sachs struggles for doing @GrantThornton , the middle-tier firm, an auditor of #USDC. Then @coinbase hires a new UK compliance chief Mark Kelly, a former Grant Thornton employee.— Ico Scam Alert (@ItsIcoScamAlert) February 19, 2019
He challenges Circle to prove their “claim” on the recent audit report by conducting another audit. But this time, it must be done by an auditor firm that’s not “related” in any ways with the company.
Now @Circle's trying to prove that this audit was independent. If #USDC's really backed by something why don't you ask for an audit someone else except your partner? #USDC is #crypto scam.— Ico Scam Alert (@ItsIcoScamAlert) February 19, 2019
While the presumption seems like a long shot, there’s nothing wrong with “keeping an eye and ear” to the topic.
As for Coinbase and Circle, nothing is wrong as well to use another auditor to perform the audit to prove their transparency and credibility.
Especially since the multiple audits are actually done as an effort to convince crypto investors that their stablecoin is different in any ways with the controversial you-know-what stablecoin.
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