USDC is the first of 45 notified e-money tokens to carry the label, and the EBA's share of supervision covers own funds, reserves, liquidity, and the recovery and redemption plans. Two reports of the decision say the authority did not identify which of MiCA's seven significance criteria the stablecoin met.
The European Banking Authority has classified Circle's USDC as a significant e-money token under the European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, and from November 12 it will directly supervise the stablecoin's own funds, reserve of assets, liquidity requirements, and recovery and redemption plans. The authority announced the decision on Wednesday, and USDC is the first of the 45 e-money tokens notified in the bloc to carry the label.
Those four areas move to the EBA from France's Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution, which licensed Circle's European arm as an electronic money institution in July 2024 and has supervised it since. The ACPR keeps the rest: governance, qualifying holdings, assessments of senior managers, outsourcing, and conflicts of interest. Supervision is split rather than handed over, with the prudential core at European level and firm-level conduct questions still in Paris. Both authorities said they would work closely through the transition.
Significance under MiCA is a test rather than a judgment. A token qualifies when it meets at least three of seven criteria, and Finance Magnates reported that those include more than 10 million holders, an issued value or reserve above 5 billion euros, and more than 2.5 million transactions worth over 500 million euros a day. The classification is reassessed annually.
What the announcement does not do is say which of those tests USDC met. Finance Magnates and crypto.news both report that the EBA identified no criteria in its decision. USDC's circulating supply is about $73 billion on The Block's figure, far above the 5 billion euro mark, but neither report says whether the criteria were measured against global issuance or European activity alone, and holder numbers and daily transaction counts inside the EU are not published figures. The result is a designation whose legal effect is precise and whose trigger is not visible.
Reserve composition and liquidity are also the parts of MiCA that Circle has publicly criticized. In early October the company argued that the regulation's requirement to hold reserves in commercial bank deposits exposes issuers to the health of their banking partners, citing March 2023, when about $3.3 billion of USDC reserves became temporarily inaccessible after Silicon Valley Bank failed, crypto.news reported. From November 12 the authority supervising that requirement for USDC is the EBA.
Recovery and redemption plans move with the reserves. Those are the documents a supervisor reaches for when holders try to redeem at once, and the Financial Stability Board told G20 finance ministers earlier this month that crisis mechanisms for stablecoins remain immature, setting out four channels through which a run could reach the wider financial system. Direct supervision puts that plan in front of the European authority rather than a single national regulator.
Circle issues USDC in the EU through Circle Internet Financial Europe SAS and in the United States through Circle Internet Financial, LLC, so the designation reaches one issuer of a token that two entities put into circulation. None of the reports of the decision say how the EBA's new prudential remit over the European issuer interacts with the American one.
USDC is the second-largest stablecoin. Tether's USDT, at about $184 billion against USDC's roughly $73 billion, is around two and a half times the size on The Block's figures, and Tether has not sought MiCA authorization, so the largest dollar token in the market sits outside the regime entirely. The two European interventions this month run in opposite directions: the European Securities and Markets Authority told national regulators to presume that any service touching a non-compliant stablecoin is incompatible with a platform's duty to act in its clients' best interests, while the EBA has taken closer hold of an issuer that complied.
Nothing in the designation changes what MiCA requires. crypto.news reported that it applies the existing framework to USDC rather than adding to it, which leaves the practical change as a question of who checks and how often. USDC now answers to two supervisors, the prudential half of that work sits with the EBA from November 12, and the label comes up for review again in a year.
