USDC

USDC is issued by a regulated, publicly listed US company that holds reserves in cash and short-dated Treasuries and publishes monthly attestations naming custodians and composition. It is the dollar token institutions hold when their mandates will not permit a less transparent one.

Disclosure is the product

Monthly attestations, a named regulated issuer, identified custodians and a published reserve composition. None of this is technically difficult and most issuers do not do it. For any counterparty whose compliance function must justify holding a crypto asset, this is the difference between possible and impossible.

Banking exposure is the real risk, and it has materialised

When Silicon Valley Bank failed, a portion of USDC reserves was held there and the token traded well below a dollar over a weekend until deposits were guaranteed. Full backing does not protect against the failure of the banks holding the backing. This is the essential lesson of fiat-backed stablecoins and it came from the most transparent issuer in the market.

Reserves are structured for liquidity

Cash and short-dated Treasuries can be converted quickly, which is what allows redemption to function during stress. Reserve quality is not about the headline figure but about how fast it can be turned into dollars when many holders want out simultaneously.

Compliance cuts both ways

The issuer can freeze addresses in response to legal orders and has done so. For most institutional and retail users this is a feature. For anyone needing censorship resistance it disqualifies the asset entirely, and no amount of reserve quality changes that.

Where it is used

USDC is deployed across a very wide set of chains and is the default dollar in most institutional and regulated contexts. Its share of trading pairs is smaller than USDT's outside the US, which is a distribution difference rather than a quality one.