Stablecoins
What is USDC?
USD Coin
USDC is a fiat-backed stablecoin issued by Circle, designed to hold a 1:1 value against the US dollar. Reserves are held in cash and short-dated US Treasuries with regulated custodians, and Circle publishes regular attestations of those holdings.
USDC is natively issued on several blockchains rather than bridged between them, which matters more than it sounds. A bridged token is a claim on a lock-up contract on another chain, and it inherits that bridge's security. Natively-issued USDC on Arbitrum, Base, Solana or Ethereum is the real thing on each chain, with no bridge in the trust path.
The practical consequence for anyone building payments is that the contract address differs per chain and the wrong address means lost funds. Native USDC and bridged USDC.e are distinct tokens with distinct addresses on the same network, and sending one to a contract expecting the other is an ordinary and unrecoverable mistake.
Related
Definitions are educational and general. Nothing here is financial, legal or tax advice, and regulatory descriptions summarise frameworks that change — check the current rules for your jurisdiction before relying on them.