Why are Ripple and Coinbase competing for Circle (USDC)

The surface reason - optimistic about USDC

-USDC occupies half of the compliant stablecoin market, with an average daily on-chain settlement volume of around $10 billion (second only to USDT).

-Circle quietly submitted an IPO in early April this year, which means it can be publicly acquired, with a valuation of $4-5 billion. After Ripple's bid of $4-5 billion was rejected, rumors emerged of an additional bid + XRP lock-up plan.

In reality, both parties are calculating their own interests:

For both sides, whoever secures USDC will hold the on-chain short debt minting rights, which can be understood as Circle being equivalent to a mini version of the Federal Reserve's discount window.

From Ripple's perspective, they have always wanted to align XRP with banking compliance, which is why Ripple proposed the additional bid + XRP lock-up plan: incorporating USDC into Ripple quietly links XRP to reserves, essentially using $1 USDC to buy $0.9 in U.S. Treasury bonds + $0.1 in XRP options - simultaneously gaining both the U.S. seigniorage and the valuation empowerment of XRP.

Coinbase's perspective is relatively simple, USDC ≈ the base currency of Coinbase and Base, and the secondary market will treat Base like an on-chain Alipay, which can similarly boost Coinbase's valuation.