USD Coin

USD Coin (USDC)

USDC is a fully reserved stablecoin that was launched in September 2018 by Circle and managed by Centre which is a consortium created by Circle and Coinbase. USDC is an open-source, smart-contract based stablecoin, offering users financial interoperability by mitigating price risk. The stablecoin operates within the regulated framework of U.S. money transmission laws with established banking partners and auditors.

USDC’s issuing authority, Circle, is a registered Money Services Business (MSB) with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of the US Treasury Department and holds money transmission (or equivalent) licenses in 48 US states. To ensure that the value of USDC remains stable, the consortium maintains a combination of USD and equivalent assets in its reserves every time they issue new tokens. These accounts are audited to ensure that there are as many USDC in circulation as there are USD and equivalent assets in those accounts. The issuer reports its USD reserve holdings for attestation by its audit partner Grant Thornton LLP monthly.

USDC first launched on the Ethereum blockchain as an ERC-20 token but has since expanded to other blockchains including Algorand ASA, Solana SPL, Stellar asset, Avalanche ERC-20, Flow FT, Hedera SDK, TRON TRC-20, and Polygon. Payment card network Visa supports transaction settlements using USDC. As of August 2022, there are 54.5 billion USDC in circulation.