Stablecoin Payments from the Ground Up

In partnership with

Stablecoins have quickly become a credible alternative to traditional payment and settlement networks. In just five years, their supply has grown from under $10 billion to over $240 billion. To better understand how stablecoins are actually used, we spoke with 20 companies across a range of use cases and collected estimates from 11 more. This report offers a rare, bottom-ups look at how stablecoins are being used in the real world.

ISSUED STABLECOINS

$245.3B

$255.2M

over the last day

Last Month

$6.9B

+2.9%

last month

Last Year

$85.4B

+53.4%

last year

Last 3 Years

$82.0B

+50.2%

last 3 years

Special Thanks to the Artemis Data Partners

How Big are Stablecoin Payments, Really?

Based on the data provided by contributing firms and the additional onchain estimates, we were able to specifically attribute $92.4 billion of stablecoin payment settled for various payment types between January 2020 and January 2023, with the vast majority of these settling on blockchains directly. The annual run rate pace for these settlements totalled approximately $72.3 billion in February 2025.

Stablecoin Payments by Type

Stablecoins are being used not just for crypto trading, but increasingly feature in the ordinary economic lives of millions of individuals around the world.

Nic Carter, General Partner at Castle Island Ventures

Top Blockchains Used for Stablecoin Transactions in 2024

The most popular blockchains employed to settle customer flows, as a share of value sent, were Tron, followed by Ethereum, Polygon (Ethereum L2), and Binance Smart Chain. This mirrors survey findings from our 2024 report which found that users preferentially used those same five blockchains, albeit with Ethereum being the most popular network.

Stablecoin Volume by Blockchain

The Most Used Stablecoins for Global Transactions

Tether's USDT was by far the most popular stablecoin used to settle flows for firms in the study. We explore the breakdown of USDT versus Circle's USDC on a country-by-country basis later in the report.

Stablecoin Payments by Token

Which Countries Send the Most Stablecoins?

Based on the geographic data provided by firms for the study, combined with additional geographic attribution estimates obtained by looking at IP addresses and timezones of on-chain entities as their transactions reach blockchain nodes, we were able to identify countries originating the bulk of stablecoin transactions. The USA, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, and the UK were the top stablecoin sending countries.

Percent of Stablecoin Flows by Country