A startup called Stronghold is launching USD Anchor, which will run on the rails of the Stellar blockchain and use its consensus mechanism to verify transactions. The token will be backed one-for-one with U.S. dollars held at a Nevada-charted trust company called Prime Trust, which in turn will deposit the cash at banks insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
New York City-based Signature Bank was originally expected to be providing the federally insured backing of the stable coin, but it appears to have backed out of the partnership at the eleventh hour, according to IBM.
IBM is partnering on the initiative with Stronghold, and said it will explore various use cases for the token with its financial institution clients.