HostDAI vs USDC — price, size and safety, side by side
DAI (Ethereum) vs USDC (BNB Chain) — every figure is the freshest dated measurement we hold for that token, never a live-feed guess. Prices stamped 2026-09-27 / 2026-09-27.
DAI vs USDC — normalized performance, 2026-09-16 to 2026-09-27T15:10:18
| DAI | USDC | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0.9983 | $0.7631 |
| Market cap | $4.59B | $11 |
| 24h volume | $3.88M | $126.92M |
| Liquidity | $73.32M | $1.38B |
| FDV | $4.59B | $38.16B |
| Holders | 706,985 | 2,778 |
| Age (days) | 1,526 | 262 |
| Safety grade | B | E |
Where they differ
- DAI measures ~417,093,627× the market cap of USDC
- USDC measures ~19× the liquidity of DAI
- USDC measures ~33× the 24h volume of DAI
- DAI measures ~254× the holder count of USDC
- over the shared window DAI moved −0.36% while USDC moved −23.7%
What the data says
DAI
DAI answered a question the other stablecoins on this site don't ask: can a dollar exist on-chain without a company behind it? Since 2019, the contract at 0x6b175474e89094c44da98b954eedeac495271d0f has held near a dollar not because anyone promises redemption at a bank, but because every DAI is minted against locked crypto collateral worth more than it, with interest rates and liquidations — governed by MakerDAO, now rebranded Sky — doing the work a treasurer would. No single company can freeze your DAI or pause the contract; that censorship-resistance is the property its holders are actually paying for.
The honest complications have grown over the years. A large share of DAI's backing has long included centralized stablecoins and real-world assets, which reimports a slice of the issuer risk the design was born to escape — the March 2023 weekend when USDC's depeg dragged DAI to roughly $0.89 alongside it made that dependency visible. And the 2024 rebrand to Sky, with its upgrade path to the newer USDS token, means DAI is now the legacy branch of its own ecosystem: still enormous, still redeemable through the same machinery, but no longer where its creators' roadmap points. Neither fact is a defect; both belong in the price of holding it.
USDC
Before the market numbers, there's a contract detail on USDC to flag. The mint and freeze levers on USDC's contract is still live as of 2026-09-27, leaving the deployer able to create new supply or freeze transfers for now. Until that changes, USDC stays around 37/100 — worth watching, and an easy win for the project if they remove it.
Here's where USDC stands today: $1.38B of on-chain liquidity, 2,778 wallets holding and 262 days old as of 2026-09-27. Against roughly $11 in market cap, the $1.38B of liquidity is genuinely healthy: deep enough that ordinary trades clear cleanly, which is exactly what you want to see. The 2,778-wallet base is a reasonable spread of ownership, though a headline count doesn't show whether a few wallets dominate — the concentration read on this page speaks to that. Treat the creator's holdings as the headline risk: 72.5% of USDC's supply sits in the deployer's wallet as of 2026-09-27, well past the 'no single holder over 5%' line the scanners use.
FAQ
Which is bigger, DAI or USDC?
By tracked market cap: DAI (Ethereum) measures $4.59B and USDC (BNB Chain) measures $11 — dated snapshots, not a live feed.
Which is safer, DAI or USDC?
On the contract checks we publish: DAI (Ethereum) grades B and USDC (BNB Chain) grades E. A grade is a structural check on the contract, not a promise about the asset.
How have DAI and USDC performed over the shared window?
Between 2026-09-16 and 2026-09-27T15:10:18, the measured snapshots show DAI at −0.36% and USDC at −23.7%.
More comparisons
DAI vs PYUSDDAI vs BTCBDAI vs CBBTCDAI vs WETHCCV vs USDCRDK vs USDCUSDC vs SOLUSDC vs WETH
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, 2026-09-16→2026-09-27T15:10:18; 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 NexFlow product.