Total USDC Supply on Ethereum Network Surpasses Tether

Circle’s USDC has surpassed Tether (USDT) in total supply on the Ethereum network, reaching a major milestone.

As of this writing, the current USDC supply on Ethereum is 40.06 billion tokens, which is slightly higher than USDT’s token supply of 39.82 billion tokens.

Tether has been the most popular stablecoin since at least 2016, initially sharing the market with the BitUSD and NuBits (USNBT) stablecoins when it launched in late 2014. At that time USDT was running on Omni. With the latter two falling into obscurity as they lost their dollar peg and lost users, USDC emerged in 2018 as a more transparent and regulated competitor to Tether, which had been questioned over the years for its reserve backing And has been shrouded in clouds.

While USDT remains the most popular stablecoin with a total supply of 78.5 billion coins, nearly 50% of that supply (38.7 billion coins) is on the Tron network. USDT can also be found on BSC, Solana, Huobi ECO Chain, Avalanche, Polygon, and 13 other chains or second-layer solutions.

The current total supply of USDC is 45.7 billion, distributed on 21 chains or second-layer solutions.

Questions over the backing of Tether's reserves have contributed to its declining public image over the years. The company has been at odds over how the stablecoin is collateralized and how it manages the reserve funds.

Accounting firm Moore Cayman released two comprehensive reserve reports on Tether's financial reserves in 2021, but this did not quell doubts. Tether revealed in its latest financial report that it holds $30.8 billion in unspecified commercial paper, in addition to other assets backing USDT.

Circle has been relatively transparent about its reserves, though not to the degree some critics have demanded. In August 2021, Coinbase President Emilie Choi stated that USDC reserves, which support the second largest stablecoin in the market, will be completely converted to cash and U.S. Treasury bonds. That did happen on October 27, 2021, according to an independent accountant's report by Grant Thornton.

Coinbase, a close partner of digital payments service Circle, helped launch USDC in October 2018. Circle is backed by Bitmain, China Everbright Bank and eight other institutions.

It has been supporting efforts to solidify the regulatory framework for all stablecoins. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire backed a November 2021 proposal by the Biden administration to treat stablecoin issuers the same as banks. Allaire also participated in a congressional hearing in December 2021 with several top leaders in the encryption industry to discuss policy direction with the Financial Services Committee.

Centralized stablecoins USDT, USDC, and BUSD are currently among the top three projects of their kind, but decentralized stablecoin solutions have begun to proliferate.

TerraUSD (UST) is the fourth largest stablecoin, but also the fastest growing stablecoin since November 2021. Since then, it has overtaken Magic Internet Money (MIM) and Dai (DAI) with a market capitalization of $10.7 billion.

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