No, USDC is permissionless, open-source and accessible to anyone to build with. You can add support for USDC in your app or dApp without needing a commercial business relationship with Circle.

If you’re interested in Circle’s APIs, you can start testing for free with a sandbox key.

Circle aims to bring native USDC to all of the largest blockchain ecosystems in Web3.

In addition, the Web3 community has built permissionless bridge infrastructure to enable USDC to flow across blockchains as a bridged asset and add liquidity to emerging ecosystems.

The Centre Consortium, a stablecoin standards organization founded by Circle and Coinbase, has set forth guidelines for blacklisting policies. If an individual violates U.S. law and is pursued by law enforcement, Circle will follow appropriate financial crime compliance measures, including Centre’s Network Access Denial Policy, as applicable.

In response to court orders and sanctions compliance, Circle has the ability to deny access to individual wallet addresses from sending and receiving USDC. When an address is denied access, it can no longer receive USDC and USDC held by that address cannot be transferred on-chain.

We take this responsibility very seriously and can share the following data:

• As of 5/26/22: Of the total $53B+ USDC in circulation, only $2.7M USDC is currently blocked. A total of 38 unique addresses have ever been blocked to date, all of which comply with OFAC sanctions and court orders.

Importantly, the blocking of addresses emits events on-chain, and we encourage the community to monitor those events. Blocking is never done unilaterally or arbitrarily and follows the highest duty of care.

The U.S. government acts through its agencies which must follow the law. There is currently no law that would permit any agency to compel Circle to KYC every holder of USDC. Additionally, Circle does not track every individual who holds USDC.

There is currently bipartisan recognition, at all levels of the U.S. government, that public blockchains and well-regulated stablecoins like USDC are important to U.S. economic competitiveness. Circle expects to see a variety of proposals from the U.S. Congress for how to best regulate - not ban - stablecoins.

USDC reserves (cash and short-dated U.S. treasuries) are held in accounts designated ‘for the benefit of customers’ and there are bankruptcy protections. Circle does not and will not use USDC reserves to run its business or to pay its debts. U.S. money transmitter laws are in place to protect holders of USDC in the unlikely event that Circle could not operate its business.

The key factors to consider for choosing a stablecoin are: (1) what is backing the reserves; (2) how are the reserves managed; and (3) how large and diversified is the market for the stablecoin. There is no other stablecoin that compares to USDC on its reserves backing, reserves management, and liquidity across public blockchains.

As open-source code, USDC can be integrated, bought, sold, lent, borrowed, traded, and spent without ever touching Circle’s commercial products and services. The universe of protocols, wallets, exchanges, merchants, and other market participants that support USDC is expanding because USDC represents stability you can trust. Fully-backed by cash and short-dated U.S. treasuries, USDC is always redeemable 1:1 for U.S. dollars.