USDC

The second-largest US dollar stablecoin, issued by Circle to stay worth US$1, backed by a BlackRock-managed Treasury fund and bank cash.

USDC is a digital token designed to keep a stable value of one US dollar. It is issued by Circle Internet Financial, LLC, a US company, and since July 2024 also by Circle's French subsidiary, which holds an e-money licence. Its Ethereum contract was created on 3 August 2018, and USDC now runs on many blockchains, with the largest balances on Ethereum, Hyperliquid, Solana and Base.

USDC has no fixed supply. Circle creates tokens when business customers deposit dollars through its Circle Mint service and removes them on redemption at one dollar per token. Most of the reserves sit in the Circle Reserve Fund, a government money market fund managed by BlackRock and holding cash, short-dated US Treasuries and overnight Treasury repurchase agreements; the rest is cash at large banks. A Big Four accounting firm checks every month that the reserves exceed the tokens in circulation. At 30 June 2026 there was US$73.3B of USDC; on 27 September 2026 about US$75.3B, roughly a quarter of all dollar stablecoins.

USDC is used to hold and send dollars, to settle trades on crypto exchanges and as the main dollar in decentralised finance. Circle reported US$14.8T of on-chain USDC transactions in the second quarter of 2026. In March 2023 USDC briefly fell to US$0.87 after Circle disclosed that US$3.3B of its reserves was held at the failed Silicon Valley Bank; it regained its peg within days.

Circle's parent, Circle Internet Group, is a listed US company that files quarterly reports with the SEC. It keeps the interest earned on the reserves, about 95% of its revenue in Q2 2026, and holders earn nothing from Circle. A large part of that income is passed to distribution partners, chiefly Coinbase, which runs its own opt-in USDC rewards programme. In August 2026 Circle received final approval from the US banking regulator to open a national trust bank.