USDC

USDC is a dollar stablecoin issued by Circle, backed by cash and short-dated US Treasuries held with regulated custodians, and the second largest by supply after USDT. Its distinguishing feature is disclosure: reserve composition is published monthly and the issuer is a US-regulated entity, which makes it the stablecoin whose backing is easiest to check and hardest to argue about.

What we track on this desk

• Reserve reports. Composition and attestation, including the maturity profile of the Treasury holdings.
• Supply changes. Mints and burns, a reasonable proxy for dollars entering or leaving crypto markets.
• Chain distribution. Which networks carry the supply, which determines where dollar liquidity actually sits.
• Regulatory position. Licensing and the legislative treatment of payment stablecoins — see Regulation.
• Institutional and payments use. Settlement, treasury management and cross-border corridors.

How to read a USDC story here

The March 2023 depeg is the reference event and is routinely misremembered. USDC traded below a dollar because a portion of its reserves sat at a bank that had failed and redemption was temporarily uncertain — a banking failure transmitted to a token, not a failure of the token’s design. It recovered when the deposit position was resolved. Reserve custody risk is the real exposure, and it is a different thing from issuance risk.

Attestations are also not audits. A monthly attestation confirms holdings at a point in time against a stated standard; it is meaningful and it is narrower than an audit. Where sources characterise one as the other, we say which was published.

Where to go next

See the Stablecoins hub for the wider category, or the Verification Center for how publishers are counted.