New Stablecoin Tied to Australian Dollar Is Launching on Stellar's Blockchain

A new stablecoin is launching on the Stellar blockchain that's designed to hold its value with the Australian dollar and is being pitched for consumer and business uses.

Announced Tuesday at the Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas, Novatti Group, an Australian online payments processor, will issue the Novatti AUD Utility Token beginning on November 19.

While traditionally, stablecoins have been a tool for cryptocurrency traders to move money quickly between exchanges, Novatti envisions its token being used for more common use cases, like remittances or purchases.

The news comes as competition among stablecoins heats up, with several new U.S. dollar-pegged tokens launching this year, including Circle's USD//Coin, TrustToken's TrueUSD, Paxos' Paxos Standard Dollar and the Winklevoss brothers' Gemini Dollar.

All eyes have been on this niche for the last week, since the well-known stablecoin tether fell below $1 and a number of exchanges quickly listed alternatives.

Most recently, Coinbase said on Tuesday it will support the USDC, the exchange's first stablecoin.

Lisa Nestor, director of partnerships at the Stellar Development Foundation, told CoinDesk that Stellar already supports at least 10 stablecoins, including USD Anchor, created by startup Stronghold with help from IBM. Requests continue to pour in for Stellar to support new fiat-pegged options, she said.

Despite the recent fluctuations in prices, some believe stablecoins can offer faster and less expensive ways to send remittances.

"For example in Venezuela, even sending money through the banks gets exchanged at a horrible rate," Venezuelan-born stablecoin advocate León Markovitz told CoinDesk.

In September, the Australian exchange Bit Trade announced it was working with the employment platform Emparta to launch a stablecoin in 2019 so employers can pay Emparta users with cryptocurrency.