USD Coin (USDC) and Tether (USDT): a comparison
USD Coin and Tether set side by side: how the quotes moved, how the protocols are built and what tasks each one was made for.
Specifications of USDC and USDT
| USD Coin (USDC) | Tether (USDT) | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0.999465 | $0.999009 |
| Ticker | USDC | USDT |
| Type | token | token |
| Network | Ethereum (ERC20) | TRON (TRC20) |
| Fees are paid in | ETH | TRX |
| Launched | 2018 | 2014 |
| Built by | Circle | Tether Limited |
| Supply cap | no cap | no cap |
| In circulation | 70.58 B USDC | 178.37 B USDT |
| Market cap | $70.54 B | $178.2 B |
| Rank by cap | #6 | #3 |
Source: CoinGecko, Nov 4, 2026 18:57. How these numbers are counted
Price movement: USDC and USDT
The start of the period is taken as 100 for both prices: the chart shows the difference in movement, not the quotes themselves.
| Period | USDC | USDT |
|---|---|---|
| 7 days | +0.01% | 0% |
| 30 days | −0.06% | −0.1% |
| 90 days | −0.02% | −0.03% |
The link between their daily moves over the quarter is 0.12 (they travel apart).
The tasks USDC and USDT were made for
- A dollar equivalentUSD Coin and Tether
How USD Coin and Tether are built
How USD Coin works
USDC, like USDT, lives in several blockchains at once — Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Arbitrum, BNB Smart Chain and others. When dollars arrive in the reserves, Circle mints new tokens; when they are taken back, the tokens are burned. It is this mechanism that holds the price at the one-dollar mark.
What USD Coin is for
DeFi protocols and businesses that care about a regulated issuer lean towards USDC more often. It is taken for payments, dollar savings, trading and moving funds from one blockchain to another.
How Tether works
USDT has no blockchain of its own. The same dollar token lives in several networks at once: TRON, Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, Solana, TON, Polygon, Arbitrum and others. You cannot move the token from one network to another directly — that is done through exchanges and bridges.
What Tether is for
People sit out drawdowns in USDT, settle deals, send dollars abroad and pay for services with it. By trading volume it is the market's number one asset and the most familiar way to lock in the result after selling other coins.