What is Circle bitcoin? Which company lies underneath this veil? Is it one that can be trusted or one that should be avoided? This is exactly what we shall be going through in today’s review. I hope that by the end of this review, you will be in a position to have a conversation with your friends about Circle bitcoin without feeling like you are not knowledgeable enough. Without further ado, let us get right into it.
- What is Circle?
- How does it work?
- What is the Circle Pay app about and what did it offer?
- What is Unique about the Open-Source Blockchain Toolkit offered by Circle?
- Is Circle Genuine or Is it a Scam?
- Pros and Cons
Name of the company: Circle
Official Website URL: https://www.circle.com/en/
Overall Rating: 
(1.5 / 5)
Recommended: Not Recommended
What is Circle?
Circle has established its position in the market as a financial services company that relies on the block-chain technology to facilitate the peer-to-peer payments, as well as crypto products. This Boston-based company was created and launched back in 2013, by one Jeremy Allaire. Jeremy is also well-known to many due to being the creator of the video platform known as Brightove.
Circle was created to be a reliable consumer peer-to-peer crypto payments platform. It was also created to facilitate the exchange of cryptos. The platform’s uniqueness in the market arises from the fact that its sponsors the well-known crypto exchange called Poloniex, which experienced some significant hardships in 2017, before being spun out in 2019.
In 2016, Circle began making very major changes to its operations. In that year, for instance, it terminated the provision of its cryptocurrency wallet services. Three years down the line (2019), Circle announced that it would be discontinuing some of its services, including Circle Pay Mobile and all its related web apps.
One of the most outstanding achievements that this company’s founders can be proud of is the introduction of their stablecoin known as USD coin whose value is backed by the actual dollars. The stablecoin, which was introduced to the market in 2018 has its value pegged to $1.
As of 2020, Circle has its attention on its stablecoin, which it presents to its customers as ‘’programmable dollars” that they can use for business.
How does Circle work?
According to this company’s official website, Circle is out to spark up major changes in the global economy, which is quite a solid mission in my opinion. This is why the company made its entry into the market with the app known as Circle Pay. This app was simply a crypto trading exchange platform. This exchange became popular for being the first one of its kind to be granted a BitLicense. This is a license given to crypto exchanges by the New York State. This opened doors for Circle, with Goldman Sachs and Baidu Inc (and several other companies) pouring in $140 million. In 2018, Circle managed to raise an extra $110 million in the form of venture capital funds. The funds helped it to create the USD Coin. USDC is an Ethereum coin whose value is backed by US dollars.
In December 2016, Circle shifted the offerings of their app, Circle Pay to peer-to-peer payments. They perceived the payments as global social payments, just to remain in tangent with their objective to revolutionize the global economy.
In 2017, Circle managed to launch its unique open-source software project which it perceived as being quite useful in the promotion of payment technology.
What is the Circle Pay app about and what did it offer?
Circle Pay was dubbed circle’s main product which was meant to facilitate instant and free money transfers between its users. The way this service worked can be likened to Venmo, which is offered by PayPal. The app could be used to make the common daily transactions such as bill payment and splitting bills.
This app was at some point the in-thing amongst millennials in Europe. According to Circle LLC, its customers’ demographics are as follows:
- 90% – below 35 years of age
- 60% – below 25 years of age.
Note that this app is no longer supported by Circle.
What is Unique about the Open-Source Blockchain Toolkit offered by Circle?
Circle has its open-source project, which is popularly known as Centre. It is named after Cent Routing Exchange, which is the protocol that it uses. All the transfers within the platform are done using Centre tokens, or CENT. These are Ethereum Tokens. This project has so far made it possible for customers to transfer funds between consumer digital wallets which can support a variety of currencies. It is also aimed at simplifying crucial process such as KYC and AML for financial service firms, by facilitating the disclosure of customer details.
As of 2016, this project was available for access by those living in:
- The UK
- United States
- South Korea
- Philippines
Centre is at the moment running on the Ethereum blockchain. It is, however, also designed to run on other blockchains.
Is Circle Genuine or Is it a Scam?
Circle is in my own opinion a genuine company. The company has been making major strides towards the achievement of various objectives on a global scale. The creation of an app and a stable 
coin (USDC), is sufficient proof that Circle is an existent company and one that is working towards the good of its customers. USDC, the Ethereum-based coin is widely-recognized by most crypto users and traders. It is, therefore, safe to say that Circle is a genuine firm (my opinion).
What do the customers think about their offerings? The reviews are given by customers about Circle paint the picture of an unreliable company. On Trustpilot, for instance, Circle has an average rating of (1.5/5) stars based on more than 70 reviews. More than 70% of the customers think that the services delivered are bad. Some of the major complaints include the inability to withdraw funds and the closure of client accounts. These, in my opinion, are very genuine concerns, which anyone can encounter as they use Circle.
I would not be quick to recommend Circle, but I’d not mind sharing what works for me.
P.S: Transact with a wide variety of cryptos with the much-desired ease
My recommended alternative to Circle
Pros and cons
Pros
- Widely known
- Has USDC
- Backed by major investors and financiers such as Goldman Sachs
Cons
- Poor customer ratings and reviews
Final Words and Verdict
Verdict: Legit (but not recommended)
Overall Rating: (1.5 / 5)
Circle is a genuine financial services company that is out to revolutionize the global economy. Noble as this mission maybe, I think Circle is out to fulfill very grandiose objectives and has not paid keen attention to issues that would define the satisfaction of the customers, as can be seen from the customer reviews. For now, I think you can get better services and offerings from my number one recommend an alternative to Circle.
Read My Full Review of My Recommended Alternative Here
I hope this review was helpful for anyone who was out to know what Circle Bitcoin is all about. Have you used any of Circle’s services before? Do you have anything that you ca share about it? Feel free to do so in the comments section. That will be all for now.
Your Friend,
Eric. Bitcoin investor and blogger at StartMakeStopWaste.
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