General
Who is the team?
The team comes out of Stanford, UC Berkeley, Palantir, and Google; its backers include Founders Fund Angel, Stanford-StartX, and Blocktower Capital. The TrueUSD team has developed a legal framework for collateralized cryptocurrencies in collaboration with WilmerHale and White & Case, and has a network of fiduciary, compliance, and banking partners.
What is TrueUSD?
TrueUSD is a USD-backed ERC20 stablecoin that is fully collateralized, legally protected, and transparently verified by third-party attestations. TrueUSD uses multiple escrow accounts to reduce counterparty risk, and to provide token-holders with legal protections against misappropriation. TrueUSD is the first asset token built on the TrustToken platform.
What is TrustToken?
TrustToken is a platform to create asset-backed tokens that you can easily buy and sell around the world. For example, gold to gold tokens or dollar to dollar tokens.
Who can use TrueUSD?
We’ve designed the alpha version to address the immediate needs of crypto exchanges, crypto traders, and financial companies.
- Crypto Traders and Exchanges: Cryptocurrency traders want a trustworthy stablecoin to hedge against volatility, and enter crypto markets without immediate exposure to BTC/ETH.
- Mainstream Commerce: Everyday people and businesses can enjoy the benefits of digital currencies (faster transaction speed than ACH, global reach) without the volatility of Bitcoin. Now you can pay a salary, take out a loan, or buy coffee with a cryptocurrency, enabling a new economy of cryptocurrency financial applications.
- Developing economies: Some developing markets are increasingly reliant on cryptocurrencies for trade.
- Financial institutions: Financial companies that want to get into crypto, but have reasonable reservations against putting e.g. $100M into a new algorithmic stablecoin vs. $100M of “legally-enforceable certificates of ownership of the US dollar”.
In the alpha version of TrueUSD, redemptions will be restricted to a $1000 minimum. Anyone can use TrueUSD once they are listed on exchanges.
In the 1.0 release of TrueUSD, we will lower our redemption minimum to allow for lower volume redemptions.
Why this sequence? We’re opening access gradually so that stability can be maintained from the beginning.
Product
How do I know my funds are secure when I wire them to the bank account?
We partner with licensed trust companies and banks to securely hold the funds backing TrueUSD tokens. For increased security, the trust companies handle all funds directly and the TrueUSD team does not have access, nor is involved in the transfer of, the escrowed funds.
When you complete the KYC/AML process and wire funds to the third-party escrow accounts, an equivalent amount of TUSD is freshly minted to your ethereum address. Each TUSD represents a redeemable certificate for one US Dollar held in escrow for the benefit of the TUSD holder. The legal privileges of token holders are described in the TrueUSD Terms of Use.
Do I have to go through the KYC/AML process?
Yes. In order to purchase TUSD or redeem TUSD through our web application, current BSA/AML regulation requires that you provide your name, Tax ID, address, Date of Birth, Government ID card, and Address Verification (if your country is not in the US).
How will you maintain price stability for TrueUSD?
Price deviations between TrueUSD and USD present an opportunity for arbitrageurs. Since traders can always trade TrueUSD for the equivalent USD on TrueUSD.com, there will be an incentive to buy or sell mis-priced TrueUSD on exchanges and convert on TrueUSD.com.
Which exchanges will you be listed on?
TrueUSD is currently listed on Binance, Bittrex, Upbit, and over 20 other exchanges.
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What is the Ethereum address of the TrueUSD smart contract?
https://etherscan.io/token/0x8dd5fbce2f6a956c3022ba3663759011dd51e73e#balances
Why do you use escrow accounts and banks?
We’re taking a practical, hybrid approach to tokenizing US Dollars.
Someday, governments might enable digital signatures for smart contracts or DAOs to directly own bank accounts. That would be more “purely decentralized.” If/when that happens, we’ll celebrate the victory for the crypto industry and start building tools to help people make use of that new regulation.
Today, if a person or company wants to open a bank account, it requires a human representative.
So until banks allow smart contract signatures, we’re building on one of the best-known, frequently-tested system for bank account management: escrow accounts. Escrow accounts are already widely used for fund management.
We recognize that escrow accounts aren’t the endgame for decentralized money and tokenized asset management, but the trust and escrow industry already work well for the management and distribution of assets.
Escrow accounts and trust accounts operate on similar legal frameworks, and we’ll use both for tokenizing different asset classes. See this blog post on trusts for more details.
Will TrueUSD tokens be classified as securities?
Our legal counsel has provided a memorandum that TrueUSD tokens are not securities. They are more akin to deposit & safekeeping receipts, which the SEC has previously analyzed and recommended no enforcement actions for their use (see 40 Fed. Reg. 1695 et. seq).
Future Plans
Why US Dollars? Do you plan to offer other currencies?
USD is already the industry standard and used as the fiat currency base trading pair. We’re starting with US Dollars - TrueEuro, TrueYen, and stable baskets of tokenized goods (including precious metals and real estate) may be future projects. People will be able to create their own baskets, and markets can decide which baskets are the best stable currencies.
Are you trying to compete with algorithmic stablecoins like Basecoin or MakerDAO?
- No. We think we will be complementary. The crypto economy needs diverse options for stable cryptocurrencies. We’re excited for algorithm-based possibilities, but they haven’t yet been proven in the market. Some investors might find extra peace of mind in the knowledge that their dollar-tokens correspond to fiat currency in an audited bank account. In the long term, we think there will be roles for both protocol-based and asset-backed stable cryptocurrencies. Traders will reasonably seek opportunities to diversify their stable crypto holdings.
- Asset-backed “stablecoin” applications built on TrustToken are similar by name but have a substantially different customer base: at least in the near term, we expect that crypto startups will be comfortable with algorithm-based stablecoins, but traditional financial institutions will prefer asset-backed tokens.
- It’s reasonable for investors to want exposure to multiple stablecoin categories, as a bet on the industry’s need for a stablecoin. It’s similar to how investors might buy both ZCash and Monero as a way to get exposure to the market’s demand for privacy coins.
Our focus is on the large demand for cryptocurrencies that are backed by real-world currencies and financial assets.
How is TrueUSD different from Tether?
We wanted to build a stablecoin that we would use and trust ourselves.
When you complete the KYC/AML process and wire funds to the third-party escrow accounts, an equivalent amount of TUSD is freshly minted to your ethereum address. Each TUSD represents a redeemable certificate for one US Dollar held in escrow for the benefit of the TUSD holder.
Here’s what this means for users of TrueUSD:
Legal Protection
As one of the most widely used legal vehicles for managing other people’s money, escrow accounts enable regular attestations and strong legal protection for token holders.
Redeemable for USD
Any institution or individual with a verified TrueCoin account that passes a standard KYC/AML check can redeem TrueUSD for USD. During the current alpha version, there is a $1000 minimum on redemptions. This amount is common for our current institutional users, and we aim to reduce this minimum for retail users in the future.
Trustworthy Fund Management
Our legal framework enables you to exchange USD directly with escrow accounts — we never touch the funds. Instead, you send USD to or receive USD from one of the escrow accounts in our network of fiduciary and banking partners to purchase or redeem TrueUSD. This reduces the counterparty risk that is common in other collateralized stablecoin projects.
Full Collateral
Every TrueUSD is always fully collateralized by USD, held in a professional trust company’s escrow account. Our publicly audited smart contracts mint TrueUSD when USD clears the escrow accounts and burns TrueUSD when USD is redeemed to ensure a 1:1 parity between the TrueUSD in circulation and the USD in the escrow accounts.
Regular Attestations
The escrow account holdings are published regularly and subject to ongoing professional attestations. We regularly undergo independent third-party evaluations by leading auditors such as Cohen & Co. to ensure best security practices.
