Membrane Finance, a Finnish company, has introduced EUROe, a fully-reserved stablecoin pegged to the Euro. According to a blog post by the company, it is the first EU-regulated crypto stablecoin and has received a license from the Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority (Fin-FSA). Each EUROe token is backed by at least one fiat Euro held in a European financial institution separate from Membrane Finance. The company aims to provide fast and low-cost near-instant payments, unlike traditional finance.
The CEO of Membrane Finance, Juha Viitala, hopes that the regulated EUROe coin will attract more Europeans to decentralized finance (DeFi) and stated that Europeans deserve a full-reserve euro stablecoin from the EU. The EUROe is initially available on Ethereum, with plans to expand to other blockchain networks.
Stablecoins, crypto tokens backed by fiat currency, have a long history in the crypto world. Tether (USDT), the first U.S. dollar stablecoin, was first released on the Bitcoin Omni Layer and later on Ethereum, where it is now the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. On January 19, Circle and Uniswap decentralized exchange released a report indicating that blockchain-based foreign exchange has the potential to reduce remittance costs by up to 80%.
