Circle
USDC
the regulated dollar stablecoin
Key facts
- #5by market value
- Rank
- Stablecoindollar-pegged, reserve-backed
- Type
- 2018Circle and Coinbase
- Launched
- Fiat-backedmonthly attested reserves
- Supply
USDC is Circle's dollar stablecoin, backed by cash and short-dated US government holdings with monthly attestations. About $73 billion in circulation as of July 2026.
What it is
USDC is a stablecoin designed to hold the value of one US dollar, issued by Circle, a Boston-founded payments company that listed on the New York Stock Exchange in June 2025. The token launched in September 2018 as a joint venture with Coinbase under the Centre consortium, with a deliberate promise: a digital dollar built the way regulators would want, fully reserved and checked monthly. One memorable fact: the bulk of its reserves sit in an SEC-registered government money market fund managed by BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager.
How it works
Circle mints USDC when customers deposit dollars and redeems it one for one when they cash out. The reserves are held as cash at regulated banks and in the Circle Reserve Fund, a government money market fund holding short-dated US Treasuries and repurchase agreements, with the composition disclosed and attestations published monthly by Deloitte. Because every token corresponds to a dollar held outside the crypto system, the peg depends on those reserves being real and reachable, which is why disclosure is as much the product as the token itself. USDC is issued natively on more than twenty blockchains, and Circle’s transfer protocol moves it between them by burning on one chain and minting on another.
The story so far
USDC’s defining test came in March 2023, when Silicon Valley Bank failed while holding $3.3 billion of Circle’s cash. The token slipped to about $0.88 (CoinGecko) over a weekend before US authorities guaranteed the bank’s deposits and the peg snapped back. Circle became sole issuer later in 2023 when the Centre consortium was wound down, became the first major global stablecoin issuer to comply with the EU’s MiCA regime in July 2024, and floated as CRCL in June 2025. The GENIUS Act, the US federal stablecoin law signed in July 2025, effectively wrote USDC’s fully-reserved, attested model into statute.
Where it stands
As of late July 2026 USDC ranks fifth among crypto assets at about $73 billion in circulation (CoinGecko), the clear second stablecoin behind Tether’s roughly $184 billion, and it trades within hundredths of a cent of $1. What to watch: whether regulated status finally narrows the gap with Tether now that US rules are in force, competition from bank-issued and exchange-issued dollars entering under the same law, and the growth of USDC on payment rails beyond exchange trading. Circle’s bet has always been that compliance wins in the end; 2026 is the year that bet is being tested at full scale.