HostUSDE vs USDC.E — price, size and safety, side by side
USDE (Ethereum) vs USDC.E (Gnosis) — every figure is the freshest dated measurement we hold for that token, never a live-feed guess. Prices stamped 2026-10-17 / 2026-10-17.
USDE vs USDC.E — normalized performance, 2026-10-09 to 2026-10-17T06:15:22
| USDE | USDC.E | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $1.00 | $0.9979 |
| Market cap | $4.80B | $9.84M |
| 24h volume | $15.40M DEX | $154.06K DEX |
| Liquidity | $13.17M | $3.18M |
| FDV | $4.80B | $9.86M |
| Holders | 48,976 | 7,909 |
| Age (days) | 84 | 521 |
| Safety grade | B | B |
Where they differ
- USDE measures ~488× the market cap of USDC.E
- USDE measures ~4.1× the liquidity of USDC.E
- USDE measures ~100× the 24h volume of USDC.E
- USDE measures ~6.2× the holder count of USDC.E
What the data says
USDE
USDe is Ethena's synthetic dollar — a stablecoin that holds its peg not with bank deposits but with a delta-neutral trade: spot crypto collateral (staked ETH, liquid stables) hedged by short perpetual futures, so the portfolio's dollar value stays flat whatever the market does. The contract 0x4c9edd5852cd905f086c759e8383e09bff1e68b3 is the canonical Ethereum deployment — USDe also exists on Solana under a different mint, where it is one of the deeper stable pools in our corpus. Our October 9, 2026 read shows $13.2 million of tracked pool liquidity on the mainnet venues.
The honest mechanics: USDe's yield is not magic — it is the funding-rate spread between staking yield and the perp market's willingness to pay longs, and that spread can and does go negative. When funding flips, Ethena pays the hedge instead of earning it, and the carry can invert into a slow bleed. The second layer is counterparty: the short positions sit on offshore exchanges through settlement custody, so exchange failures or frozen collateral are real, non-theoretical risks — the design survived the October 2025 liquidation cascade, which is evidence, not a guarantee. It is also not the same risk shape as UST: USDe is fully collateralized at inception; the failure mode is a sustained negative-funding grind plus a custody break, not a mint-redeem death spiral.
USDC.E
One detail on USDC.E didn't fully resolve in the 2026-10-09 snapshot: its contract controls. So rather than assume anything either way, it's worth a direct check, and the scanner above reads it live in a couple of seconds before you trade.
Market-wise, USDC.E carries $3.18M of on-chain liquidity, 7,909 wallets holding and an established record at 521 days as of 2026-10-09. Against roughly $9.84M in market cap, the $3.18M of liquidity is genuinely healthy: deep enough that ordinary trades clear cleanly, which is exactly what you want to see. A 7,909-holder base is a fair start, but distribution matters more than the count — check how much sits in the largest wallets before leaning on it. On concentration, the deployer wallet holds just <0.01% of USDC.E as of 2026-10-09, so the person who launched it isn't sitting on a dominant share.
FAQ
Which is bigger, USDE or USDC.E?
By tracked market cap: USDE (Ethereum) measures $4.80B and USDC.E (Gnosis) measures $9.84M — dated snapshots, not a live feed.
Which is safer, USDE or USDC.E?
On the contract checks we publish: USDE (Ethereum) grades B and USDC.E (Gnosis) grades B. A grade is a structural check on the contract, not a promise about the asset.
How have USDE and USDC.E performed over the shared window?
Between 2026-10-09 and 2026-10-17T06:15:22, the measured snapshots show USDE at +0.13% and USDC.E at −0.22%.
The grade column is the one CMC's compare page cannot print — our grade is computed from the contract itself (mint/freeze authority, liquidity, holder concentration). Changes are measured over the shared window stated on the chart, 2026-10-09→2026-10-17T06:15:22; a token with fewer measured points measures a shorter span inside it.
Figures are dated on-chain snapshots, not a live feed. Safety grades are structural checks — not investment advice. Free · no signup · a HostDeFi product.