Grant Thornton’s latest monthly attestation report verifies the cash and U.S. Treasury assets backing USDC, including details on the portfolio holdings in the Circle Reserve Fund.
This is part of Circle’s ongoing Trust & Transparency series.
As part of Circle’s continued commitment to transparency, the latest independent attestation report on the USD Coin (USDC) reserve provides details on the portfolio holdings of the Circle Reserve Fund, a fund managed by BlackRock Advisors, LLC, the world’s largest asset manager.
Since launching USDC in 2018, Circle has worked to issue the most transparent and trusted payment stablecoin in the world, and we have continued to enhance our disclosure of the USDC reserve. To that end, we have published monthly attestation reports from the accounting firm Grant Thornton to provide independent confirmation that we hold at least as much in dollar-denominated reserves as the amount of USDC in circulation.
With the recent addition of the Circle Reserve Fund, we are now able to provide the deepest level of third-party, independent reporting since USDC’s inception. One of the Circle Reserve Fund’s features is that it provides independent daily reporting of its underlying portfolio. We expect to transition the remaining USDC reserves currently held in U.S. Treasuries in a separate account into shares of the fund by the end of Q1 2023.
The November 2022 attestation report shows that total USDC reserve assets were $43.4 billion, entirely held directly or through shares of the fund in short-dated U.S. Treasuries and cash in U.S. dollars held directly with leading U.S. financial institutions and custodians within the regulated U.S. banking system.
Circle will continue to secure and publish monthly independent attestation reports with details on the underlying portfolio of the Circle Reserve Fund - including CUSIPs, maturity dates and market values of each Treasury bill in the fund’s portfolio - and a list of the U.S. financial institutions that hold the cash portion of the USDC reserve.
The Circle Reserve Fund is a registered 2a-7 government money market fund managed by BlackRock. Its portfolio consists of cash and short-dated U.S. Treasuries. Custodied at Bank of New York Mellon and registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the fund is subject to regulation under the Investment Company Act of 1940, and is only available to Circle.
The USDC reserve is also protected by state laws and regulations and shares of the fund and cash are held in separate accounts from the rest of Circle’s business and operations. Every decision we make about how and where we hold the USDC reserve is designed to maximize safety and liquidity so that USDC is always redeemable 1-1 for U.S. dollars.
Please visit our USDC Transparency & Stability page to learn more.
