USDC

USDC is a US dollar stablecoin issued by Circle — each token is backed 1:1 by cash and short-term US Treasuries held in regulated banks, attested monthly by an accounting firm. It's the "compliance-first" stablecoin: issuer is US-based, reserves are conservative (no commercial paper, no crypto collateral), and Circle will blacklist addresses at the request of law enforcement (controversial but a real feature for institutional use). Runs as an ERC-20 on Ethereum plus native deployments on most other major chains (Solana, Base, Arbitrum, Avalanche — multi-chain is the norm). Market cap typically sits second to USDT at $30-50B. The key difference vs. USDT in practice: USDC loses adoption in crypto-native trading venues to USDT, but wins in US regulated contexts, fintech integrations, and protocols that care about reserve transparency. The March 2023 depeg to $0.87 — when SVB held part of Circle's reserves — was a reminder that "fully backed" still has counterparty risk at the bank layer.