USDC (USDC)

USD Coin (USDC) is the most regulation-forward of the major stablecoins. Issued by Circle, it is designed as a digital US dollar: fully backed by cash and short-term US government bonds, with monthly independent attestations.

On this page, USDC's AUD chart mostly mirrors the AUD/USD exchange rate. Australians typically use USDC as a stable on-ramp, a way to park value between trades, or to move dollars on-chain.

USDC is a stablecoin: a blockchain token engineered to track the US dollar at a 1:1 ratio. Issuer Circle Internet Financial publishes monthly reserve attestations from a Big Four accounting firm (Grant Thornton), and the reserves consist of cash and short-dated US Treasury securities, a large part held via BlackRock-managed funds.

USDC exists on many blockchains — Ethereum, Solana, Base, Arbitrum and others — making it one of the most portable forms of on-chain dollars.

Customers mint USDC by depositing US dollars with Circle and redeem USDC back into dollars on a 1:1 basis. That mint/redeem mechanism, plus arbitrage, keeps secondary-market prices near $1.

Circle operates under US state money-transmitter licences and has pursued regulation-first positioning, including its 2025 listing as a public company in the US. (Note: availability of direct mint/redeem services is limited to approved businesses; retail users buy and sell USDC on exchanges.)

USDC launched in 2018 as a project of Circle and Coinbase's CENTRE consortium; Circle later took sole control of the issuer's governance.

In March 2023 USDC briefly lost its peg after Circle disclosed exposure to the failed Silicon Valley Bank, falling toward $0.88 before recovering within days once reserves were confirmed accessible. The episode was a real-world stress test of stablecoin backing, and USDC has traded at peg since.

USDC has no maximum supply. Tokens are minted when dollars enter the reserve and burned on redemption, so circulating supply rises and falls with demand for on-chain dollars. Live supply and market cap are shown above.

Australians can buy USDC on AUSTRAC-registered exchanges with AUD via PayID or bank transfer. USDC is commonly used to deposit value onto international platforms or to sit in a dollar-denominated asset between trades.

The ATO treats stablecoins as crypto assets for CGT purposes. Converting AUD to USDC and later to another crypto are separate disposals that may each create a capital gain or loss. Keep AUD-value records for every trade.

Risks include peg risk (a temporary loss of the $1 peg, as in March 2023), reserve/banking risk (reserves sit with commercial banks and fund managers), and regulatory change as stablecoin rules tighten globally.

USDC is not a bank deposit and carries no deposit insurance. It is generally a more conservative stablecoin structure than algorithmic designs, but it is not risk-free.