USDC
Why models recommend it
“USDC is the safest stablecoin in 2026, now supervised federally under the GENIUS Act and licensed as an e-money token under MiCA”Claude Haiku 4.5 · Negative question · first choice
“current comparisons generally place USDC among the stronger options, while stressing that it is not risk-free”Perplexity Sonar · Negative question · first choice
“Generally Safer Alternatives ... USDC (Circle) - Regulated U.S. entity, monthly attestations”Kimi K2 · Negative question · first choice
“such as USDT (Tether), USDC (Circle), and others that meet regulatory standards”Mistral Small · Negative question · first choice
What gives them pause
“USDC briefly lost its peg during the March 2023 banking crisis ... Caution: While these recovered, they highlight operational and regulatory risks.”MiniMax M2.5 · Negative question · warning
“Fiat-collateralized stablecoins such as USDT and USDC ... "rely heavily on centralised issuers"”Muse Glimmer 30B · Negative question · warning
“it highlighted the risk of centralized issuers holding deposits in volatile banks”GLM 4.7 FlashX · Negative question · warning
Also on the shortlist
The products named in the same answers as USDC, over the 32 answers that named it, and how often each was the first choice instead.
| Product | Named together | Picked instead | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 16 | 1 | View → | |
| 14 | 1 | View → | |
| 14 | 0 | View → | |
| 12 | 0 | View → | |
| 9 | 0 | View → | |
| 8 | 0 | View → | |
| 5 | 0 | View → | |
| 5 | 0 | View → | |
| 5 | 0 | View → | |
| 5 | 0 | View → |
What the models named instead of USDC →
A side-by-side page exists where both products are among a category's top eight.
How this is measured
Fourteen AI models from 12 labs are asked the same buying questions six ways, for three company sizes. Standings refresh every edition.
Gane sells AI visibility software. No company can pay to change a result.
Read the method →Sources returned with these answers
Fourteen of the fourteen models returned a source list in this edition: five return the pages they cited and nine the search results they consulted. These counts come from 28 of the 32 answers that named USDC and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
No domain is on file for USDC, so its own site is not marked.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
By model
| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Warning | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Grok 4.20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mistral Small | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Kimi K2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |