Last 7 days, both indexed to zero
Each line starts at zero seven days ago and shows the percentage move since, so the two are on the same scale regardless of what one coin costs. Seven days is a week, not a trend.
| DAI | USDC | |
|---|---|---|
| Selling $100,000 loses What a $100,000 sell actually lost against the quoted price. Measured on-chain where we sweep the coin, otherwise on the exchange that took it best. | 0.27% Ethereum, 23 Oct | 0.01% Kraken, 24 Oct |
| Price A higher price per coin is not a bigger asset — it is the same value cut into fewer pieces. | $1.00 | $0.9996 |
| Market cap Price multiplied by circulating supply. The closest thing to "how big is this". | $4.54B | $71.62B (larger) |
| Rank by market cap | #23 | #6 (larger) |
| Change, 24h | 0.00% | ▲0.01% |
| Change, 7 days | ▼0.01% | ▲0.01% |
| 24h volume How much actually changed hands. Thin volume against a large market cap means the price is easier to move than the cap suggests. | $97.68M | $8.85B (larger) |
| Daily turnover Volume as a share of market cap — how much of the asset trades in a day. | 2.15% | 12.36% (larger) |
| Circulating supply | 4,541,572,233 DAI | 71,648,664,715 USDC (larger) |
| Supply cap A hard cap and an uncapped supply are different designs, not a better and a worse one — what matters is whether issuance is predictable. | No fixed cap | No fixed cap |
| Below all-time high How far each sits under its own record price. It says where the price has been, not where it is going. | ▼18.03% | ▼4.16% |
| All-time high | $1.22 Mar 2020 | $1.04 Nov 2018 |
A highlighted figure is simply the larger of the two. It is marked on size, liquidity and supply — where bigger is a fact — and deliberately not on price or on percentage change, where "bigger" would be us implying a winner.
What each one is
Dai
DAI is a dollar-pegged stablecoin created in 2017 by MakerDAO, and it works fundamentally differently from Tether or USDC. No company holds dollars in a bank for it. Instead, users lock crypto collateral into smart contracts and mint DAI against it, always depositing more value than they borrow.
USDC
USD Coin (USDC) is a dollar stablecoin issued by Circle, launched in 2018. It is widely used as settlement cash across exchanges and decentralised finance, and is generally regarded as the more compliance-focused of the large stablecoins.
What each one can do
| DAI | USDC | |
|---|---|---|
| Be sold for dollars | Yes Through: Nobody | Yes Through: An account at an exchange |
| Be held without a company | Not written up | Partly Through: Circle |
| Earn a return by itself | Partly Through: The protocol's savings contract | No |
| Limit its own supply | Not written up | No |
| Hold a steady dollar value | Partly Through: The collateral locked behind it, and the token holders who govern the protocol | Partly Through: Circle, and the banks and fund that hold its reserves |
| Be redeemed for what backs it | Not written up | Partly Through: Circle, or an exchange |
| Be used on other chains | Not written up | Yes Through: Circle |
The reasons and the sources are on each coin’s page: Dai, USDC. A “yes” is a description, not a point scored.
Where each one lives
Dai
Issued as a token on Ethereum.
The same name exists on several chains. Sending to the wrong one is the most common way people lose money here — check the contract address on the DAI page.
USDC
Issued as a token on Algorand, Aptos, Arbitrum, Arc and 31 more.
The same name exists on several chains. Sending to the wrong one is the most common way people lose money here — check the contract address on the USDC page.
Whichever you hold, holding it yourself is the same problem
Both of these can sit on an exchange, and on an exchange neither of them is yours in the way people assume. If you decide to hold either one properly, this is the category that does it — devices that keep the keys off any internet-connected machine.
All hardware wallets we list → Some listings earn us a commission. That buys position on a list and nothing else — our rules, in writing.
We do not know your position, your timeframe or your tolerance for losing money, and any page that claims to answer this question without knowing those things is selling something. What we can do is make sure the facts above are current and that nothing on this page was paid for. Both of these assets can fall a long way.
Other comparisons
Figures for Dai and USDC synced 5m ago from CoinGecko and shown in USD. This page is market information and education, not financial advice, and nothing on it is a recommendation to buy or sell DAI or USDC. Both can lose value.
