USD Coin (USDC) — Price, Peg & Arbitrage Tracker

USDC is considered more transparent — Circle publishes monthly attestations showing 100% dollar backing in US Treasuries and FDIC-insured US banks. However, USDC is not risk-free: the March 2023 SVB bank failure caused USDC to drop to $0.87 temporarily (a 13% de-peg). USDT has had smaller depegs historically despite less transparency. Both carry counterparty risk. For maximum safety, diversify: hold both USDT and USDC, and never keep large balances on exchanges.

USDT and USDC both target $1.00 but often trade at slight premiums/discounts relative to each other on different exchanges. When USDC is at $1.002 and USDT is at $0.999, you can swap USDT → a coin → sell for USDC, profiting from the $0.003 difference. This "stablecoin-to-stablecoin" arb is lower risk since both are pegged assets. Find USDT/USDC spread opportunities in our scanner at /arbitrage.

Coinbase uses USDC natively (the company is a co-founder of USDC). Kraken, Gemini, and Bitstamp also list many pairs against USDC. Most DeFi protocols on Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Polygon use USDC for their deepest liquidity pools. Asian exchanges (Binance, OKX, Bybit) primarily use USDT — creating spread opportunities when USDC-heavy and USDT-heavy exchanges are compared.

Yes. USDC yield options in 2026: (1) Coinbase rewards: 5%+ APY on USDC held in Coinbase account (US only). (2) DeFi lending: Aave, Compound offer 3%–8% APY on USDC. (3) Exchange earn products: Binance Simple Earn, OKX Savings. (4) T-Bill backed protocols: Ondo Finance, Maple Finance offer 4%–6% on USDC. Only idle USDC should earn yield — never lock arbitrage capital in illiquid products.