While the European Central Bank is carrying out its first experiments with an official digital euro, a start-up, Angle Labs, is launching a euro-based stablecoin with broad ambitions.
The appearance of Tether’s USDT, the first stablecoin, changed theuniverse from cryptomonnaie. For the first time, it was possible to manipulate a currency benefiting from the advantages of blockchain (security, inviolability, etc.) while maintaining a permanent parity with the dollar. Other stablecoins followed (USDC, BUSC, DAI …) but all maintained this equivalence with the dollar.
The concept of stablecoins seemed attractive enough for states to take hold of the concept. So the China rushed to develop a yuan digital, which is a stablecoin. Its official launch should take place in 2022.
The need for a stablecoin aligned with the euro
And the euro in all of this? According to a spokesperson for the Banque de France, more than 86% of central banks are carrying out or have carried out experiments with digital currencies. The European Central Bank is working on an official stablecoin whose value would be equal to that of the euro. She even carried out a survey on the potential of such a currency and, out of the 8,200 responses received, it appeared that the interest was very high. Various experiments have already been launched. However, the ECB has given itself a lot of time for the official launch of this euro-aligned stablecoin … Until 2025!
Angle Labs at the initiative
A start-up, Angle Labs, has finally taken the lead. As of today, it is launching the first large-scale stablecoin backed by the euro. For the more curious, the white paper of this initiative (Angle Protocol) can be found at this address: https://www.angle.money/
At the origin of Angle Labs, are Pablo Veyrat and Guillaume Nervo, two French people who recently graduated from the Stanford University. It is by playing with a loan platform of the DeFi (decentralized finance), Compound, which Pablo Veyrat says he realized the importance of having a stablecoin backed by the euro. « In 2020, the euro lost 10% in value against the dollar. So, I realized that I was exposed to a major risk in the euro / dollar conversion ”, explained Veyrat to TechCrunch.
There are already a few euro-based stablecoins, including one launched by Casino, the LUGH, or even the Tether EURt, but none of them has yet particularly made a splash. What could distinguish agEUR from such competitors?
The first concern of Pablo Veyrat and Guillaume Nervo was to secure a “collateral”, that is to say a guarantee fund for all those who would like to bet on their token AgEUR, since, by definition, for a stablecoin, there must be an official currency reserve at least equal to that of the tokens put into circulation.
At the end of September, Angle Labs raised $ 5 million from several venture capital funds: Andreessen Horowitz, Fabric VC, Wintermute, Divergence Ventures, Global Founders Capital, Alven but also two business angels (angel investors) French, Julien Bouteloup and Frédéric Montagnon.
In addition, AgEUR has been designed in such a way as to guarantee an “over-collateral” (much greater collateral than what would be necessary) in Bitcoin and Ethereum, the two strongest cryptocurrencies in the field. And the protocol was conceived, affirm its creators, in such a way as to be able to generate returns on investments. To be continued, therefore.
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