Sam Altman’s World Chain Adds Native USDC Stablecoin and Circle’s Cross-Chain Service

World Chain, the blockchain of Sam Altman-backed World Network, is now host to natively minted USDC, the stablecoin issued by recently listed crypto firm Circle (CRCL), the companies said on Wednesday.

World Network also joined Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP V2), allowing holders to move USDC across a range of blockchains.

Some 2 million World Network users already held bridged USDC, and this has now been upgraded to native USDC issued directly by Circle, according to a press release. Businesses can use Circle Mint to directly convert between fiat and USDC on the layer-2 blockchain, enabling global on/off-ramps and cross-chain swaps with no third-party bridges, the release said.

Stablecoins are possibly the hottest sub-sector within crypto, with a plethora of mainstream uses coming online day by day and Circle’s recent IPO success for added good measure. World Network, the ecosystem that’s grown out of the Worldcoin data collecting orb from OpenAI founder Altman, has been piling on applications including offering wallets with a full range of bank-like services courtesy of Visa.

The cross-chain capabilities added to World Network means developers, businesses and consumers can quickly and easily move funds and fully benefit from decentralized finance (DeFI) composability, according to the release.