Circle’s EURC euro stablecoin surpasses €400 million, year-over-year growth at 284%

Circle announced that its EURC euro stablecoin has surpassed €400 million in circulation, a milestone achieved nearly four years after its initial launch. While this figure remains modest beside the dominance of dollar-pegged stablecoins, Circle’s progress highlights a persistent effort to develop alternative payment rails outside the US dollar system.

Expansion across blockchains and market impact

EURC was initially launched on Ethereum in June 2022. By 2023, Circle expanded the euro stablecoin’s presence to additional blockchains, including Avalanche, Stellar, Solana, and Base. By December 2024, the token was circulating on five blockchains with almost €80 million in supply. The company stated EURC’s supply doubled in the first half of 2025, with year-over-year growth of 284%, and reached €310 million by the end of that year.

Patrick Hansen, Circle’s Director of EU Strategy and Policy, emphasized the scale of this growth, noting in a post that EURC had “officially crossed €400 million in circulation for the first time in history,” more than ten times its size at the start of the MiCA regulatory period just two years before. Peter Schroeder, a fellow Circle executive, also highlighted the significance of EURC as the first euro-pegged stablecoin to reach this threshold.

EURC’s supply more than doubled over the past 12 months, reaching the €400 million mark and positioning itself as the leading euro-pegged stablecoin in terms of market capitalization and adoption.

Dollar stablecoin dominance remains

Despite EURC’s remarkable growth, dollar-based stablecoins continue to dominate the market. According to a Bank for International Settlements report published in May 2026, nearly 98% of all stablecoin value is denominated in dollars. This entrenched dominance suggests that dollar-pegged assets continue to underpin most blockchain-based commerce and settlement activity, with euro alternatives still occupying a small fraction.

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Efforts to transact in euros on-chain have long faced liquidity and infrastructure barriers. Circle noted that users often had to route transfers through dollar-based stablecoins or rely on complicated integrations, resulting in friction and limited direct euro liquidity.

Regulatory pressures have further shaped the sector. Tether ended support for its EURT euro stablecoin instead of adapting to new European rules, a move that further concentrated market activity among MiCA-compliant euro tokens. By mid-2026, the collective value of euro-based stablecoins rose to around $900 million, still constituting less than 1% of the globally estimated $300 billion stablecoin market.

MiCA’s regulatory shift and EURC’s positioning

The European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation, which took effect in December 2024, required new standards for reserves, transparency, governance, and redemption in the issuance of digital assets. Circle designed EURC to qualify as an “e-money token” under MiCA’s legal framework, issuing it from France through an institution supervised by ACPR and backed with segregated reserves.

While MiCA did not directly spark higher demand for euro stablecoins, it provided a clear legal undercurrent for regulated entities such as banks and payment firms to consider euro stablecoins for blockchain-based settlements and transfers.

EURC now features on multiple major exchanges, payment processors, and is supported by institutional custody solutions. Both Visa and Mastercard extended their stablecoin settlement capabilities to include EURC, helping bridge the gap between crypto-native and traditional payment infrastructure.

Growth in real-world usage

Significant progress has also been observed in real-world adoption. On August 13, payments company Thunes rolled out EURC prefunding across Ethereum, Solana, Base, and Stellar, enabling euro-denominated transactions outside standard banking hours and eliminating the need to convert funds to dollars first.

Third-party data supports this shift. Research conducted by Dune for Visa showed that, during the period ending February 2026, local-currency stablecoins saw a notable jump in total transaction volume to $1.2 billion, growing almost 90%. Euro-based stablecoins accounted for over 80% of this market value and 85% of transactions. EURC processes between $10 billion and $20 billion in monthly volume, supported by a rising user base—from 40,000 addresses in January 2023 to over 1.2 million by February 2026.

Amidst technical innovations and expanding market infrastructure, a broader transition is visible in the form of tokenized assets feeding into on-chain finance. While traditional markets still depend on intricate broker networks, platforms like 1stepSwap now allow users to hold shares of leading US companies, gold, and silver directly in their crypto wallets. This model leverages tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) and rapid price discovery, effectively removing intermediaries and speeding up market access for investors.

EURC in context: the stablecoin market remains dollar-led

The €400 million milestone is significant as a proof-of-concept for the euro as an on-chain currency, highlighting improvements in regulation, liquidity, and integration. However, the euro stablecoin sector remains a fraction of the overall stablecoin economy, which continues to be closely clustered around dollar-denominated assets. The pace of EURC’s rise, particularly over the past year, reflects both the momentum of regulated projects and persistent challenges for non-dollar stablecoins in building mass-market adoption.

Despite EURC’s rapid acceleration from less than €100 million in early 2025 to nearly €400 million by mid-2026, the stablecoin market remains predominantly dollar-based, with non-dollar tokens still playing a much smaller role.