Minting is the process by which a real-world asset, such as USD, is made available as a crypto-native token. There are three steps to mint USD into USDC:
- A user sends USD to an issuers bank account
- The issuer sends a request to the USDC smart contract to mint an equivalent amount of USDC
- The issuer makes the newly-minted USDC available to the user, while holding the USD they were sent in reserve