TL;DR:
- Circle states that USDC is the only stablecoin in the top 10 by market capitalization that complies with the EU’s MiCA regulatory framework.
- The 60% reserves rule in EU banks led Tether to exit the European market and discontinue its EURT stablecoin.
- Binance, Coinbase, Kraken and OKX removed USDT pairs for their European users, although aggregate volumes barely changed.
The European stablecoin market is undergoing its biggest reshaping since the sector was created. Circle has become the main beneficiary of the full implementation of the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation.
The firm stated that its stablecoin USDC is the only one among the ten largest by market capitalization that complies with the new regulatory framework. The company also noted that its euro-backed token, EURC, received approval under the same rules.
According to Circle’s dedicated European regulatory page, both tokens can be fully redeemed in fiat currency, hold segregated reserves, periodic attestation reports and redemption mechanisms accessible to the public. Circle published its reserves report on August 3.
Circle Can Dominate The European Market
The requirement that proved hardest to meet for major issuers was the so-called 60% rule: stablecoins categorized as “significant” must maintain at least that proportion of their reserves in bank deposits within the EU. USDT meets all the quantitative criteria that trigger that categorization, including more than 10 million users and a market capitalization exceeding €5 billion.
Tether chose to exit the European market rather than comply with that requirement. Its CEO, Paolo Ardoino, warned that shifting assets from U.S. Treasury bonds to commercial bank deposits could compromise the stablecoin’s stability during periods of financial stress. He also discontinued EURT, its euro-pegged token.
Binance, Coinbase, Kraken and OKX removed USDT pairs for their European clients to avoid breaching the MiCA framework. However, a study published in July 2026 by LUISS economist Nicola Borri and University of Surrey researcher Kirill Shakhnov indicates that USDT and USDC market shares “barely moved” following the delistings. In Europe, Circle’s share in the USDT-USDC pair grew by approximately 6%, driven mainly by a 20% drop in USDT volume rather than an increase in demand for USDC.
The Rise of Euro Stablecoins
Meanwhile, the euro stablecoin market set an all-time record. Data from DefiLlama show that MiCA-compliant euro-denominated tokens approached $900 million by mid-2026. A consortium of nine European banks, including BBVA, ING and UniCredit, announced the launch of a euro stablecoin under the same framework, signaling that traditional banking views tokenized money as a core component of the payments system of the future.
Even so, euro stablecoins account for less than 1% of the global stablecoin market, estimated at around $300 billion, where the dollar continues to dominate decisively.
