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Circle USDC Transparency & Reserves (public page, fetched April 2026)

Source·published 2026 (page maintained by Circle; latest content reflects January 2026 attestations and 23 April 2026 issuance/redemption summaries)·Circle Internet Financial / Circle.com
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Source: https://www.circle.com/transparency

Summary

Circle's public transparency page articulates the structural commitments and disclosure regime backing USDC and EURC. The defining policy claim is a 1:1 redemption guarantee — USDC is "always redeemable 1:1 for US dollars, and EURC is always redeemable 1:1 for euros, always." Reserves are "100% backed by highly liquid cash and cash-equivalent assets," concretely structured as cash deposits at large banks, short-dated US Treasury securities, and overnight US Treasury repurchase agreements.

The structural mechanism that makes this transparency claim regulator-grounded is the Circle Reserve Fund (USDXX), an SEC-registered 2a-7 government money market fund that holds the majority of USDC reserves. The fund is managed by BlackRock, with daily independent third-party portfolio reporting publicly available via BlackRock's product page. The remainder of the reserve sits in cash deposits at unnamed but characterized "leading global banks." The 2a-7 government MMF is a long-established US securities-law primitive used by money market funds for liquidity and stability — USDC inherits the regulatory transparency of that vehicle for its majority-reserve component.

The disclosure regime is a two-tier cadence: weekly self-published Circle reports of holdings + mint/burn flows, plus monthly third-party attestation by a Big Four accounting firm (currently Deloitte & Touche LLP, Circle's independent auditor since fiscal 2022; previously Grant Thornton LLP from 2015). The monthly attestations follow attestation standards set by the AICPA and provide third-party assurance that reserves exceed circulating USDC. Circle states it has "issued reports on all reserve assets since 2018" — making it one of the longest reserve-disclosure histories among centralized stablecoin issuers.

Regulatory licenses explicitly named on the page footer:

  • Circle Internet Financial, LLC — licensed as a Money Transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Institutions, and licensed for Virtual Currency Business Activity by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS).
  • Circle International Bermuda Limited — licensed to conduct digital asset business by the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA).

Notably, MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation) is not mentioned on this transparency page. Circle's EU-side regulatory posture is not surfaced here. For an institutional buyer doing EU-jurisdiction diligence on USDC, this is a structurally significant absence.

Key claims

  1. 1:1 redemption guarantee for USDC and EURC. — > "USDC is always redeemable 1:1 for US dollars, and EURC is always redeemable 1:1 for euros. Always."
  2. 100% cash and cash-equivalent backing. — > "USDC is a digital dollar backed 100% by highly liquid cash and cash-equivalent assets and is always redeemable 1:1 for US dollars."
  3. Reserve composition: three asset classes — cash deposits at leading financial institutions, short-dated US Treasury securities, overnight US Treasury repurchase agreements.
  4. Majority of reserves held in the SEC-registered 2a-7 government MMF (USDXX). — > "The majority of the USDC reserve is held in the Circle Reserve Fund (USDXX), an SEC-registered 2a-7 government money market fund." Managed by BlackRock; daily independent portfolio reporting publicly available.
  5. Two-tier disclosure cadence: weekly Circle + monthly Big Four. — > "USDC reserve holdings are fully disclosed on a weekly basis, along with associated mint/burn flows. Additionally, a Big Four accounting firm provides monthly third-party assurance that the value of USDC reserves are greater than the amount of USDC in circulation."
  6. Attestation standards: AICPA. — > "The reports are prepared according to attestation standards set out by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA)."
  7. Reporting history since 2018. — > "we've issued reports on all reserve assets since 2018, along with SEC filings in 2021 and 2022."
  8. Current independent auditor: Deloitte & Touche LLP (since fiscal 2022); previously Grant Thornton LLP (from 2015).
  9. Circle Internet Financial, LLC: NYDFS Money Transmitter + Virtual Currency Business Activity licenses.
  10. Circle International Bermuda Limited: BMA digital asset business license.
  11. No MiCA mention. Circle's EU regulatory posture is not surfaced on this page.

Concepts cited

  • Proof of reserves — the central transparency primitive; Circle's two-tier weekly + monthly disclosure regime is a canonical implementation.
  • 2a-7 government money market fund — the US-securities-law structure underpinning Circle's majority-reserve vehicle.
  • E-money token (EMT) — single-USD-pegged → EMT-archetype issuer under MiCA framing, even though Circle's transparency page does not mention MiCA.
  • Citation discipline — Circle's weekly + monthly + AICPA-attested disclosure regime is a real-world institutional implementation of structural citation discipline at the issuer layer.
  • Counterparty-graph research — Circle's transparency page itself surfaces named counterparties (BlackRock as fund manager, Deloitte as auditor, NYDFS as regulator, BMA as regulator), making the page a graph traversal target.
  • Crypto-asset white paper — Circle does not file a MiCA white paper as of this page; the EU-side disclosure layer is absent.

Vendors discussed

  • Circle — primary subject of the page.

Sectors touched

Notable quotes

"USDC is always redeemable 1:1 for US dollars, and EURC is always redeemable 1:1 for euros. Always."

"USDC is a digital dollar backed 100% by highly liquid cash and cash-equivalent assets and is always redeemable 1:1 for US dollars."

"The majority of the USDC reserve is held in the Circle Reserve Fund (USDXX), an SEC-registered 2a-7 government money market fund."

"Daily, independent, third-party reporting on the portfolio is publicly available via BlackRock."

"The reserve is designed to provide holders with ready liquidity, even under extremely stressed conditions."

"As part of our strong commitment to transparency, we've issued reports on all reserve assets since 2018, along with SEC filings in 2021 and 2022."

Open questions raised

  • Circle's MiCA registration status as of 2026-04. The transparency page does not surface it. Does Circle have an EU subsidiary registered as an EMT issuer under MiCA Title IV? A follow-up source (Circle's EU regulatory disclosure or the ESMA register snapshot) would resolve this.
  • Identity of the named "leading global banks" holding the cash component. The transparency page describes them generically but does not name them on this page. Other Circle disclosures (SEC filings, monthly attestations) may name them.
  • Did the transparency page change after the March 2023 SVB depeg event? USDC depegged briefly in March 2023 when ~$3.3B of cash reserves at Silicon Valley Bank were briefly inaccessible. The current page does not discuss the SVB episode explicitly — has the bank-counterparty disclosure regime changed since then? Out-of-scope for this ingest, but a follow-up source to consider.

External references

  • BlackRock USDXX (Circle Reserve Fund) product page — https://www.blackrock.com/cash/en-us/products/329365/
  • USDC monthly attestation reports archive — https://6778953.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6778953/USDCAttestationReports/ (reports from October 2018 onward; pattern: [YEAR]/[YEAR] USDC_Examination Report [MONTH] [YY].pdf).
  • EURC monthly attestation reports archive — https://6778953.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6778953/EURC%20Attestations/ (reports from June 2022 onward; renamed from EUROC to EURC in 2023).
  • Specific attestation PDFs are linked but not fetched into this wiki — they are point-in-time financial snapshots; the structural / policy content above captures the durable substance.

Cross-references