Tether and USDC Both Say $1. What Actually Backs That Dollar?
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5 min read
You hold 1,000 USDT in one wallet and 1,000 USDC in another. Both show about $1,000. Are they the same thing?
Not quite. The price is the same. What sits behind the price is not. This post compares USDT vs USDC reserves: what each issuer says it holds, who checks it, and how big the safety cushion is.
A quick definition first. A stablecoin is a crypto token meant to stay at one US dollar. The reserve is the pile of assets the issuer keeps so it can pay you back one dollar per coin.
Figures below come from search summaries of issuer reports and news coverage, retrieved 11 October 2026. I could not open the original PDFs, so check the issuers' own pages for exact numbers.
Tether is the bigger coin. Coverage of its Q2 2026 report puts about 184.6 billion USDT in circulation (Stablecoin Insider, KuCoin News).
Against that, the report shows about $187.75 billion of assets and $183.64 billion of liabilities (Forklog). Liabilities here means what Tether owes: one dollar for every USDT out there.
The assets are a mix:
| Asset | Amount | Share of assets* |
|---|---|---|
| US Treasury bills | $114.96B | about 61% |
| Reverse repo (short loans backed by Treasuries) | $25.62B | about 14% |
| Gold (146.2 tons) | $18.84B | about 10% |
| Bitcoin (98,933 BTC) | $5.8B | about 3% |
*NetWort arithmetic: each amount divided by $187.75B. Sources: Forklog and Crowdfund Insider. The rest is mostly secured loans, which I could not size from these sources.
A Treasury bill is a short loan to the US government. It is about as safe and as easy to sell as an asset gets. Gold and bitcoin are not. Their prices move every day.
USDC is smaller and simpler. Circle, the company behind it, reported $73.3 billion of USDC in circulation at the end of June 2026 (Circle Q2 2026 results, via search summary).
Its SEC filing says about 84% of the reserve sits in the Circle Reserve Fund. The rest is cash spread across several banks (Circle 10-Q, via search summary).
That fund is a government money market fund. It holds US Treasury securities that mature in three months or less, overnight Treasury repo, and cash. BlackRock manages it.
So the USDC reserve has no gold, no bitcoin and no loans. It is cash and short Treasuries. That is the main difference.
Both issuers publish reports checked by an outside accounting firm. But "checked" can mean two things.
An audit is a full examination of the books. An attestation is narrower. The firm confirms specific numbers on a specific date, such as "reserves were at least equal to coins outstanding."
Here is how they compare:
| Tether (USDT) | Circle (USDC) | |
|---|---|---|
| Report frequency | Quarterly | Monthly |
| Outside firm | BDO | Deloitte |
| Reserve mix | Treasuries, repo, gold, bitcoin, loans | Money market fund and bank cash |
BDO's work on Tether is described as an attestation by most coverage, though one outlet calls it an audit report. I could not settle that from the sources I could reach. Read the document's own title before you rely on either word.
Deloitte's monthly USDC reports are described as attestations too, not full audits (S&P Global).
Here is the number that matters most. Subtract liabilities from assets and you get the excess reserves, or cushion.
Tether's cushion fell from $8.23 billion to $4.11 billion in one quarter (Stablecoin Insider). Coverage ties most of that to falling gold and bitcoin prices.
Let us do the arithmetic. This is a worked example, not a forecast.
That would eat most of the cushion. Tether also earns interest on its Treasuries, which can rebuild the buffer over time. The point is only that a reserve holding volatile assets can move, while a reserve of cash and Treasuries barely does.
USDC showed its weak spot in March 2023. About $3.3 billion of roughly $40 billion in reserves was stuck at the failed Silicon Valley Bank (CNN Business). That is about 8%. USDC dipped to around $0.87, then recovered within days. We cover that story in how a stablecoin depegs.
Tether's weak spot is different. It is the quality of the assets behind the dollar, not one bank. Gold and bitcoin can fall, and a falling cushion is what a nervous holder watches.
New US rules point toward the USDC model. Summaries of the GENIUS Act say issuers must hold reserves one for one in assets like cash and short Treasuries, and publish monthly reserve reports. The effective date is reported as 18 January 2027 or earlier, and sources differ on details (Baker McKenzie, Forvis Mazars). Check the final rules.
For more on the risks around stablecoin returns, see stablecoin yield risk.
Reports are a snapshot. Prices are live. Open the NetWort Market page to see how crypto is moving today, and watch whether stablecoin-linked assets stay calm when the rest of the market does not.