A US-dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by Circle, fully backed by short-term Treasuries and cash, favored by institutions and DeFi protocols.
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USDC (USD Coin) is a fully-collateralized US dollar stablecoin issued by Circle, a US-regulated financial services company. Each USDC token represents one US dollar held in reserve, with reserves consisting of cash and short-duration US Treasury securities. Circle publishes monthly attestations of reserve composition by a Big Four accounting firm and is regulated as a money services business in the United States.
USDC was launched in 2018 originally under the Centre Consortium (a joint venture with Coinbase) and is now issued primarily by Circle. It is available natively on multiple chains including Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, Base, Arbitrum, Polygon, and Stellar, with each chain holding a portion of the total supply. USDC is widely used in DeFi protocols, by institutional traders, and by retail users seeking dollar-denominated stability with a more conservative reserve profile than alternatives.
Circle mints new USDC when authorized customers wire US dollars to Circle's bank accounts, and burns USDC when customers request redemption back to USD. The mint/burn flow keeps total USDC supply equal to total dollar reserves. Customers can access this primary issuance through Circle Mint (Circle's institutional onboarding service); retail users typically buy and sell USDC on exchanges.
Reserves are held in regulated US financial institutions and short-duration US Treasury securities. Circle publishes monthly attestations of total reserves, and a separate quarterly review of reserve composition. The transparency around USDC reserves is one of the main reasons institutional users prefer it over alternatives with less-disclosed backing.
USDC is the preferred stablecoin in DeFi protocols on Ethereum and L2s, particularly in lending markets (Aave, Compound) and decentralized exchanges (Uniswap, Curve). It is heavily used by Coinbase as the default payment rail for institutional services. Many traditional fintech companies (Stripe, Visa, PayPal) integrate USDC for cross-border payments. TerminalFeed accepts USDC on Base for premium API credits.
USDC is more conservative than USDT in reserve management but smaller in total supply and trading volume. The March 2023 Silicon Valley Bank collapse temporarily depegged USDC because Circle held a portion of reserves at SVB; the peg was restored within 48 hours when banking regulators backstopped depositors. The event highlighted that even high-quality reserves carry banking-system risk. USDC also depends on US regulatory tolerance for stablecoins, which remains an evolving question.
TerminalFeed accepts USDC for premium API credits. See the stablecoin entry for the broader category and the stablecoin-flows endpoint for issuance data.