On Wednesday 14 October 2026 the European Banking Authority (EBA) named USDC the first “significant” e-money token in the European Union, out of 45 notified under the MiCA rules, The Block reported. From 12 November 2026 the EBA takes over checks of the reserve behind it from the French supervisor. USDT, the larger of the two, has no such status: regulated exchanges in Europe stopped offering it to their EU clients between December 2024 and March 2025.
That gap is the shortest answer to the question “USDT vs USDC”. Both tokens aim to be worth one US dollar. Both run on Ethereum and on other blockchains, and both issuers can freeze them. They differ in who issues them, what stands behind them and how often that is checked, which regulators have signed off on them, and on which networks they circulate.
Size is the other difference. On 22 October 2026, around 08:43 UTC, DefiLlama counted about $183 billion of USDT in circulation against about $73 billion of USDC. That makes USDT roughly 60% of all the pegged tokens the site tracks and USDC about 24%.
Below, the two sit side by side, read the way a regulator reads a stablecoin: issuer, licence, reserve report, network. It assumes you know what a stablecoin is; if not, start with our beginner lesson on stablecoins, which covers the basics this page does not repeat. Facts are as of October 2026. Nothing here is investment advice, and the lesson does not tell you which token to hold.
Tether and Circle: two issuers with very different histories
USDT is issued by Tether, a private group run by chief executive Paolo Ardoino. It shares owners and managers with the Bitfinex exchange, a link documented by the New York Attorney General in 2021. On 13 January 2025 Tether said it would move its headquarters to El Salvador after obtaining a digital asset licence there, DL News reported. It is not listed on any stock exchange and does not publish audited accounts.
USDC is issued by Circle, a US company. Circle Internet Group listed on the New York Stock Exchange on 5 June 2025 under the ticker CRCL, after pricing its shares at $31 and raising about $1.05 billion. As a listed company it files reports with the SEC. In Europe, USDC is issued by a separate subsidiary, Circle Internet Financial Europe SAS, based in France. In the United States it is issued by Circle Internet Financial, LLC.
The split between a private offshore group and a listed US company with a French arm explains most of what follows. Disclosure rules, licences and the regulators who can ask questions all follow from where the issuer sits.
USAT: Tether’s second dollar token for the US market
Do not confuse USDT with USAT. In September 2025 Tether announced USAT, a separate token designed for the US rules, issued by Anchorage Digital Bank (a federally chartered bank) with Cantor Fitzgerald as reserve custodian and Bo Hines, former executive director of the White House crypto council, as head of the US unit. USAT is small: about $183 million in circulation on 22 October 2026 according to DefiLlama, against about $183 billion for USDT. A wallet that holds one does not hold the other.
Reserves and attestations: what backs each token, and who checks
A dollar stablecoin is only as good as the assets its issuer holds and its willingness to hand back dollars when you redeem. The two issuers hold different kinds of assets and publish different kinds of reports.
Tether: Treasury bills, gold and bitcoin, checked once a quarter
Tether publishes a quarterly attestation prepared by the accounting firm BDO. The latest one, published on 31 July 2026 and covering 30 June 2026, shows total assets of $187.75 billion against liabilities of $183.64 billion. The difference, $4.11 billion, is what Tether calls its excess reserve. Three months earlier that buffer stood at $8.23 billion, so it roughly halved in a quarter.
The assets are not all dollars or bills, and Tether’s own release gives fewer figures than its earlier ones did. It confirms more than 146 tons of gold, says secured loans were cut by about $2.38 billion (15%), and calls Tether one of the largest holders of US Treasuries without giving an amount. The rest comes from outlets that read the BDO report. Forklog put US Treasury bills at $114.96 billion. Forklog and Forkast both valued the gold, 146.2 tons, at $18.84 billion and Tether’s 98,933 bitcoin at $5.80 billion as of 30 June. Forkast also noted that the report now gives gold by weight only and no longer shows a dollar value for the bitcoin, so treat those two dollar figures as the outlets’ numbers, not Tether’s.
Tether reported a net operating profit of about $1.5 billion for the quarter, earned mostly on the interest from its bills.
Gold and bitcoin move in price, Treasury bills barely do. In the second quarter Tether added 14 tons of gold, yet the value of its gold fell from $19.84 billion to $18.84 billion as the metal dropped to about $4,000 an ounce, according to Forklog. Price moves of that size come straight out of the buffer.
An attestation is not an audit. BDO checks that the assets listed existed on one day, 30 June. It does not test Tether’s internal controls over a full year. Tether started its first full audit of its financial statements with KPMG in March 2026, according to Forkast, which reported on 1 August 2026 that the audit was not finished. Tether’s own release refers to a “Big Four audit process” without giving a date for the result. As of October 2026, no audited Tether accounts have been published, and the third-quarter attestation had not appeared.
Circle: a BlackRock money market fund, checked every month
Circle keeps most USDC reserves in the Circle Reserve Fund, a US government money market fund registered with the SEC under the ticker USDXX and managed by BlackRock. The fund’s holdings are reported daily on BlackRock’s site. The rest sits as cash at large banks. According to Circle’s transparency page, a Big Four accounting firm gives monthly assurance on the reserve, and Deloitte audits Circle’s financial statements. The latest monthly report linked from that page, as of 19 October 2026, covers August 2026.
No gold, no bitcoin, no secured loans: the USDC reserve is cash and short-dated US government debt. That simpler mix is also what MiCA requires of an e-money token in Europe.
Neither issuer pays you interest
Holding USDT or USDC earns you nothing from the issuer. Tether and Circle keep the interest their reserves earn, which is how both make money. MiCA forbids e-money token issuers from paying interest to holders, and any yield offered on a platform comes from that platform, with its own risks.
USDT vs USDC at a glance, as of October 2026
The table puts the main facts in one place. Supply figures come from DefiLlama on 22 October 2026; the other lines come from the sections of this lesson.
| USDT (Tether) | USDC (Circle) | |
|---|---|---|
| Supply, 22 Oct 2026 (DefiLlama) | about $183 billion | about $73 billion |
| Price, 22 Oct 2026, 08:43 UTC | $0.9992 | $0.9997 |
| Issuer | Tether group, HQ move to El Salvador announced 13 Jan 2025 | Circle (NYSE: CRCL); EU issuer Circle Internet Financial Europe SAS |
| Reserve report | Quarterly BDO attestation (latest: 30 June 2026) | Monthly assurance by a Big Four firm (latest linked: August 2026) |
| Main reserve assets | Treasury bills, gold, bitcoin, other assets | BlackRock-managed government money market fund, bank cash |
| Full audit | KPMG audit under way, not published | Deloitte audits Circle’s financial statements |
| MiCA status (EU) | No authorised issuer; delisted by EU platforms in 2025 | Authorised e-money token since 1 July 2024; “significant” from 14 Oct 2026 |
| Largest network | Tron (about 51%) | Ethereum (about 62%) |
| Issuer can freeze tokens | Yes | Yes |
| Lowest point in a stress event | about $0.95, 12 May 2022 | about $0.87, 11 March 2023 |
USDT vs USDC under MiCA: one is authorised in the EU, the other is not
The EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation treats a token pegged to a single official currency as an e-money token. Since 30 June 2024, only an authorised bank or e-money institution may issue one or offer it to the public in the EU. That rule is the reason the two dollar tokens now live very different lives in Europe.
Circle’s French licence came in July 2024
On 1 July 2024 Circle announced that its French arm had obtained an electronic money institution licence from the ACPR, France’s banking supervisor, making USDC and its euro token EURC compliant with MiCA. Circle described itself as the first global stablecoin issuer to comply.
Two years later the EBA went a step further. On 14 October 2026 it classified USDC as a significant e-money token, the first of the 45 notified in the EU. Size and use across borders drive that label. From 12 November 2026 the EBA takes over supervision of Circle Europe’s own funds, reserve of assets, liquidity, and recovery and redemption plans; the ACPR keeps governance, qualifying holdings, fitness checks of managers, outsourcing and conflicts of interest. The EBA also signed an agreement with the New York Department of Financial Services to share information about USDC. Our news report on what the EBA designation changes for Circle and EU holders has the details.
USDT was pushed off regulated EU platforms in 2025
Tether did not seek a MiCA licence for USDT. On 17 January 2025 the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published a public statement telling crypto platforms to stop making tokens from unauthorised issuers available for trading. The statement named no token. It asked platforms to restrict purchases by the end of January 2025 and allowed a “sell only” period until the end of the first quarter of 2025, “to allow EU investors to liquidate or convert their position”, in ESMA’s words.
The big exchanges moved one after the other:
- Coinbase stopped European users from trading or holding USDT and other non-compliant stablecoins from 13 December 2024, Decrypt reported, while USDC and EURC stayed available as MiCA-compliant tokens.
- Kraken wound down USDT for clients in the European Economic Area in stages from February 2025 and converted remaining balances by 31 March 2025.
- Binance announced on 3 March 2025 that it would remove USDT and eight other non-compliant stablecoins from spot trading for EEA users at 23:59 UTC on 31 March 2025, while keeping deposits, withdrawals and custody open and letting users sell leftovers through its Convert service, Cointelegraph reported.
The transition window that let older national crypto licences keep operating under MiCA closed on 1 July 2026. Since then, every platform serving EU clients needs a full MiCA licence, and the stablecoin rules apply to all of them.
What this means for a European user
USDT is not illegal in the EU. No rule forbids you from holding it, keeping it in a self-custody wallet or sending it to someone; ESMA’s statement itself says “mere custody and transfer” of these tokens should remain possible. What changed is that authorised platforms may not offer it to you: you will not find USDT spot pairs on a MiCA-licensed exchange, and a platform may convert what you leave there. You can still use USDT on decentralised applications, outside the scope of those platform rules, at your own risk.
USDC, in contrast, comes with rights written into MiCA. A holder of an e-money token can ask the issuer to redeem it at par, in dollars, at any time and without a fee. The reserve has to be held in safe, liquid assets, kept apart from the issuer’s own money. For a reader in France, Italy or Germany, that is the practical difference between the two in October 2026.
In the United States: the GENIUS Act and the foreign-issuer question
US rules arrived later. The GENIUS Act, the first federal law on payment stablecoins, was signed on 18 July 2025. It limits issuance to approved issuers holding reserves in cash and short-term US government debt, with monthly public reports on the reserve.
On 21 October 2026, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) published its final rule implementing the Act for the issuers it oversees, in Bulletin 2026-50. The rule creates a new part 15 of its regulations covering reserves, redemption, risk management and custody. It takes effect on 18 January 2027. Rules on money laundering and sanctions will come in a separate rulemaking with the Treasury. The bulletin also states that “the OCC will have regulatory authority over foreign payment stablecoin issuers”, and lists their examination and supervision among the topics of the new part 15.
Circle is a US company and has positioned USDC for these rules. USDT is issued from outside the United States, and the Act restricts how foreign issuers can offer tokens to people in the US. Tether’s answer so far is the separate USAT token. Whether USDT itself can keep being offered on US platforms once the rules apply is not settled as of October 2026. Watch for decisions by the Treasury and the OCC before 18 January 2027.
The US enforcement record on these tokens is about disclosure. In February 2021 the New York Attorney General settled with Tether and Bitfinex for $18.5 million and found that USDT had at times not been backed one to one. Attorney General Letitia James said: “Tether’s claims that its virtual currency was fully backed by U.S. dollars at all times was a lie.” In October 2021 the CFTC fined Tether $41 million; it found Tether held enough fiat reserves on only 27.6% of days in a 26-month sample from 2016 to 2018. Tether and Bitfinex admitted no wrongdoing in the New York settlement, and both cases concern the years 2016 to 2019, before Tether’s quarterly attestations began.
Where each token circulates: Tron for USDT, Ethereum for USDC
A stablecoin is a blockchain that runs exactly as written when it is called, holding and moving funds according to its code, without an intermediary able to change the outcome.">smart contract deployed on several blockchains at once. A USDT on Tron and a USDT on Ethereum are worth the same, but they live on different networks and cannot cross without an exchange or a bridge. That is why an exchange asks you to pick a network before you withdraw.
DefiLlama’s breakdown on 22 October 2026 shows how differently the two tokens are spread:
| Network, 22 Oct 2026 (DefiLlama) | USDT | USDC |
|---|---|---|
| Tron | $92.8 billion (about 51%) | not among the top chains |
| Ethereum | $72.5 billion (about 40%) | $44.7 billion (about 62%) |
| BNB Chain | $9.2 billion (5%) | $1.6 billion |
| Solana | $2.7 billion | $7.1 billion (about 10%) |
| Hyperliquid L1 | not among the top chains | $7.0 billion (about 10%) |
| Base | not among the top chains | $4.3 billion (6%) |
| Arbitrum | $0.8 billion | $2.3 billion |
Half of all USDT sits on Tron. USDC is concentrated on Ethereum and spreads across Solana, the Hyperliquid trading chain and Base, the Ethereum layer 2 built by Coinbase. A later lesson explains what layer 1 and layer 2 networks are.
The cost of a transfer depends on the network, not on the token. Sending USDC on Ethereum costs the Ethereum gas fee of the moment; sending it on Solana or Base usually costs a fraction of that. The same is true of USDT on Tron or Ethereum. Check the fee your exchange or wallet shows before you confirm, and always send on the network the receiving address expects: a token sent to the wrong chain can be lost.
Depeg history: USDC at $0.87 in March 2023, USDT at $0.95 in May 2022
Both tokens have slipped below a dollar under stress, for different reasons, and both recovered.
USDC and Silicon Valley Bank, March 2023
On Friday 10 March 2023, US regulators closed Silicon Valley Bank. Late that evening Circle confirmed that $3.3 billion of the roughly $40 billion of USDC reserves was still at the bank, The Block reported, because transfers it had ordered the day before had not gone through. On Saturday 11 March USDC fell below 87 cents, according to CoinDesk data cited by CNBC.
Circle said it would cover any shortfall with its own resources. On Sunday 12 March US authorities announced that all depositors of the bank would be protected, and USDC climbed back towards a dollar as banks reopened on Monday. Holders still left: DefiLlama data show USDC supply fell from $43.2 billion on 10 March to $36.0 billion on 20 March 2023, about $7 billion redeemed in ten days.
The lesson for readers is about cash. A reserve held in bank deposits is safe only as long as the bank is, which is one reason Circle now keeps most of its reserve in a government money market fund rather than in bank accounts.
USDT after the fall of Terra, May 2022
On Thursday 12 May 2022, days after the algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD collapsed, USDT briefly fell to about $0.95, Decrypt reported, and regained its peg the next day. Paolo Ardoino, then Tether’s technology chief, said the company had redeemed $7 billion in 48 hours. Its market value fell from an all-time high above $83 billion on 11 May to $75.6 billion, Decrypt reported on 13 May. Ardoino blamed arbitrage between exchanges where USDT traded slightly above or below a dollar; critics saw a test of its reserves.
On 22 October 2026 at 08:43 UTC, DefiLlama priced USDT at $0.9992 and USDC at $0.9997. Within a tenth of a cent of a dollar is normal for both in quiet markets. It is not a promise for the next crisis.
Both issuers can freeze your USDT or USDC
This is one point where the two are alike. Both contracts include a blacklist that the issuer controls: an address on the list can no longer send its tokens. Tether says it freezes addresses at the request of law enforcement agencies, and Circle’s contract gives it the same power. The list is public on the blockchain, so anyone can check whether an address is affected.
Moving tokens to self-custody does not change this. A hardware wallet protects you against an exchange failing or a hacker taking your keys, but the token is still a claim on Tether or Circle, and the issuer’s contract still applies. If you want to understand the wallet side, our guide to how crypto wallets work covers custody in detail.
Which one for which use: the facts, not a verdict
Readers often search “USDT vs USDC, which is safer” or “which is better”. There is no single answer, because the two serve different needs and carry different risks. The facts per use, as of October 2026:
- Trading on a global exchange outside the EU: USDT has the larger supply, about two and a half times that of USDC, and is widely listed in trading pairs.
- Trading on a regulated EU platform: USDC and euro tokens such as EURC are the dollar and euro stablecoins these platforms may offer; USDT spot pairs are gone.
- Reserve transparency: USDC publishes monthly assurance on a reserve held mostly in a SEC-registered fund; USDT publishes a quarterly attestation on a reserve that includes gold and bitcoin.
- Decentralised finance: both are widely used in lending and exchange protocols. Before you connect a wallet to one, read our introduction to DeFi.
- Sending money cheaply: the network matters more than the token; check fees and that the recipient supports the same chain.
- Legal redemption rights in Europe: only USDC, as an authorised e-money token, gives EU holders a right written into MiCA to redeem at par.
Some readers split their holdings between the two to avoid depending on a single issuer. Whatever you do, a stablecoin is not a bank deposit: there is no deposit insurance in the EU or the US, and the value depends on the issuer and its reserve.
How to convert USDT to USDC, and what the tax office sees
Swapping one for the other takes a trade. On a centralised exchange that lists both, you sell one against the other through a USDT/USDC pair or a convert button. On a decentralised exchange, you swap them in a pool on the same network. Either way you pay a trading fee, and on-chain you also pay the network fee. Our guide on how to buy crypto explains the steps on an exchange.
Taxes follow the country, not the token. In the United States, the IRS treats digital assets, stablecoins included, as property, not currency. Exchanging one digital asset for another is a transaction you report on your return, even when the gain or loss is a fraction of a cent, so a USDT to USDC swap is not invisible to the tax office. Moving tokens between wallets you own is not a sale.
European readers should look up their own rules: they differ by country and change often. The French and Italian versions of this lesson cover French and Italian tax treatment.
What to watch next
Three dates matter for the USDT vs USDC comparison in the coming months. On 12 November 2026 the EBA starts supervising USDC’s reserve directly. Tether’s third-quarter attestation, covering 30 September 2026, is due after quarter end, and the KPMG audit has no published date. On 18 January 2027 the OCC rule under the GENIUS Act takes effect, and with it the question of how USDT can be offered in the United States.
This lesson is part of our getting-started path. The previous one explains decentralised applications, where both stablecoins are used every day; a later lesson covers layer 1 and layer 2 networks. For how pegs and reserves work in general, the stablecoin lesson linked at the top of this page remains the starting point.
