Understanding Avalanche USDC vs. USDC.e

Recently, Circle announced the launch of USD Coin (USDC) on Avalanche (“Avalanche USDC”), which is the native USDC token on the Avalanche blockchain (specifically, Avalanche C-Chain).

Circle customers are able to mint native Avalanche USDC from the Circle Account and Circle APIs. Similar to other native USDC tokens on other blockchains, you can deposit Avalanche USDC back into a Circle Account and off-ramp to fiat currency seamlessly.

USDC.e on Avalanche is a "bridged form of Ethereum USDC" that was bridged from the Ethereum blockchain via the Avalanche Bridge. For this reason, USDC.e is not the same as native USDC. Circle products do not support USDC.e. You cannot send USDC.e to a Circle deposit address. To elaborate, it is not possible to use USDC.e in the Circle APIs, nor deposit USDC.e into a Circle Account and off-ramp back to fiat currency.

To off-ramp back to fiat currency with USDC.e, you would need to "unbridge" the USDC.e back to the Ethereum blockchain via the Avalanche Bridge. After the "unbridging", you would end up with native USDC on Ethereum ("Ethereum USDC"). At that point, you would be able to deposit the Ethereum USDC into your Circle Account and off-ramp to fiat currency. You could also deposit the Ethereum USDC into your Circle Account and withdraw the corresponding amount of Avalanche USDC to an Avalanche external address.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions and we’ll be happy to help.