More than $305 billion in stablecoins circulated across public blockchains as of Oct. 2025, powering global remittances and institutional tokenization.
On-chain dollar transfers surpassed $15.6 trillion over the past year—volume that reflects stablecoins' maturity as financial infrastructure rather than speculative assets.
Fortune 100 companies are increasingly exploring stablecoins for cross-border payments. Competition for that volume is likely to intensify as more issuers enter the market, pressuring fees and challenging issuer profitability.
Ethereum anchors the market, with its L1 and L2 ecosystem accounting for more than half of all stablecoin supply. Solana leads for high-throughput payments; Tron dominates low-fee remittances in emerging markets. BNB Chain hosts exchange-linked liquidity, and newer EVM entrants—Base, Arbitrum and Polygon—extend settlement to cheaper layers.
Ethereum mainnet alone holds roughly $161 billion in stablecoin market cap. Its trailing-30-day transfer volume reached approximately $2.09 trillion, the largest of any single chain.
In 2025, Ethereum averaged around 720,000 unique stablecoin-sending addresses per week, with two recent weeks exceeding 1 million. Geographic patterns show Western institutions and fintechs concentrated in Ethereum and its EVM ecosystem, while retail flows in Asia, the Middle East and Africa run primarily through Tron and BSC—chains that see heavier activity outside Western working hours.
USDT is the most-used stablecoin on Ethereum, accounting for roughly 50 to 53 percent of the chain's total stablecoin supply.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said tokenization is an "unstoppable freight train" set to reshape the financial system, with stablecoins as its first layer.
The GENIUS Act, signed in 2025, established the federal framework for payment stablecoin issuers, mandating one-to-one backing with U.S. dollars, short-term Treasuries and other high-quality assets.
J.P. Morgan Global Research said whether non-bank stablecoin issuers will gain access to the Federal Reserve's balance sheet remains unresolved—a question with direct implications for managing run risk.
