This much is documented: since October 14, 2026 USDC has carried the status "significant" as the EU's first e-money token, the European Banking Authority EBA takes over direct supervision of the issuer's own funds, reserve and redemption plans on November 12, 2026, and for USDT Tether holds no authorisation as an e-money token under the EU's MiCA regulation. If your balance sits with a provider holding an EU licence, you can therefore continue to buy, swap and redeem USDC unchanged, while USDT drops out of the offering there. Our assessment follows further down: for a portfolio in Germany, a stablecoin's authorisation now weighs more heavily than its market size.
The relative sizes point the other way from the supervisory law. On October 22, 2026 USDT came to around $183 billion in market value and USDC to around $72 billion; the older token is thus roughly two and a half times the weight of the authorised one. Our comparison of the two stablecoins for EU investors dates from December 2024, when this question was still purely a matter of reserves and trust. Since the stablecoin part of MiCA has been in application, authorisation decides first and everything else after.
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