Global Stablecoin Industry Development Report: USD Stablecoins Dominate the Market, USDC Rises Rapidly

2025 is an important year in the development of stablecoins. In this year, stablecoins not only set new records in market size and trading activity, but regulatory policies and capital attention are also accelerating simultaneously. This asset class, initially serving as a "safe haven" tool within the crypto market, is gradually expanding into the forefront of global payments, cross-border trade, DeFi infrastructure, and even sovereign credit.

The recently released "2025 Global Stablecoin Industry Development Report" points out that stablecoins have become one of the most critical infrastructures connecting traditional finance and the crypto world, and are changing the global financial landscape. The report conducts a comprehensive analysis of the stablecoin industry from multiple perspectives, systematically outlining the development history, market structure, application scenarios, global regulation, development potential, and potential risks across six dimensions, combining on-chain transaction data, policy progress, and industry evolution paths.

US dollar stablecoins dominate

The report shows that in the global stablecoin market, the US dollar stablecoin holds an absolute advantage, with an issuance of 256.4 billion USD. In contrast, fiat stablecoins from other countries are still in the early stages, with the euro stablecoin ranking second at only 49 million USD. Stablecoins like the Japanese yen, British pound, South Korean won, and lira range from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of USD. This indicates that non-US dollar fiat stablecoins still have significant growth potential.

As of July 2025, the total market value of global stablecoins has exceeded $250 billion, a significant rise compared to the beginning of the year. Among them, the combined market value of USDT and USDC accounts for 86.5% of the market, forming a duopoly in the stablecoin sector. It is worth noting that the total on-chain transfer volume reached $36.3 trillion, surpassing the total transaction volume of Visa and Mastercard for the year, becoming a new cornerstone of the global payment network. In addition, USDC has shown significant growth in 2025, reaching 40.9%. If this growth rate continues, it is expected to surpass USDT around 2030.

This rise trend is driven by multiple factors:

• Major economies are gradually advancing stablecoin legislation, and regulatory pathways are becoming clearer.
• Traditional finance and tech giants are actively entering the stablecoin space.
• The parent company of USDC has successfully gone public in the United States, igniting the imagination of the capital markets regarding stablecoins.
• Users in regions with high inflation in multiple countries view stablecoins as a "digital dollar" hedging tool.
• Emerging scenarios such as DeFi, RWA, and payment settlement continue to inject actual demand for stablecoin.

From the perspective of on-chain activity, the number of global monthly active stablecoin addresses has exceeded 30 million, and the total number of on-chain holding addresses has surpassed 168 million. According to the data, after excluding bots and exchange wallets, the proportion of transactions led by real users has increased from less than 15% in 2023 to about 22% currently, indicating a gradual transition of the user structure from arbitrage bots to enterprises and retail investors.

Stablecoins Enter Mainstream Financial Sectors

The role of stablecoins is evolving from "trading hedging anchor" to "mainstream digital financial asset." Since the beginning of this year, many global tech giants and financial institutions have been increasingly investing in stablecoin arrangements:

• A certain stablecoin issuer successfully listed on the US stock market, with its market value once approaching 100 billion RMB, becoming the first "quasi-systemically important financial institution" in the stablecoin industry.
• A payment giant has launched its own stablecoin and deployed it on a high-performance public blockchain; another payment giant has introduced USDC in B2B settlements with partners.
• A certain e-commerce giant's stablecoin has entered the regulatory sandbox testing phase in Hong Kong, with application scenarios including cross-border payments, investment transactions, and consumption settlements.
• Retail giants are promoting the use of stablecoins directly for online retail payments by collaborating with cryptocurrency exchanges.
• Emerging public chains attract a large amount of stablecoin deployment due to low fees and high scalability, with the market value of a certain public chain's stablecoin rising over 600% this year.

The joint promotion of traditional finance, internet platforms, and the native power of cryptocurrencies has upgraded stablecoins from "cryptocurrency-specific settlement tools" to widely available digital payment intermediaries, which also raises higher requirements for regulatory compliance.

Structural Challenges Behind Scale Rise

Despite the market's strong performance, stablecoins still face many structural challenges and controversies:

1. Real usage scale issue: Although the overall transfer amount of stablecoins reaches 36 trillion USD, as much as 70% to 80% of this is composed of "virtual traffic" such as transfers by robots and internal transactions within exchanges, the actual usage scale by C-end or enterprises still needs further exploration and definition.

2. Anchor mechanisms and transparency issues: Major stablecoins still have disputes regarding the structure of reserve assets and risk exposure, and transparency and compliance need further improvement.

3. Regulatory policy differences: There are still differences and games between the regulatory policies of various countries. Some regions have not yet opened up to the use of stablecoins, while some markets actively take on the role of experimental fields for institutional innovation.

It is worth noting that the U.S. "GENIUS Act" has explicitly stated that stablecoins do not fall under the category of securities, prohibits algorithmic stablecoins, and requires reserves to be 100% in highly liquid assets (such as cash and short-term U.S. Treasury bonds). If this legislation comes into effect, it will profoundly impact the operational logic of existing mainstream stablecoins and the global compliance structure.

Report Highlights: A Comprehensive Overview of Stablecoin Development

The report provides a comprehensive overview of the development of stablecoins using various methods, covering the following six dimensions:

1. Development History: A Review of the Ten-Year Evolution of Stablecoins
2. Market Landscape: A detailed explanation of the dual oligopoly structure, distribution of public chain issuance shares, trends in monthly active users, and other core data.
3. Application Scenarios: Focusing on the key role of stablecoins in cross-border payments, DeFi, retail payments, and RWA.
4. Global Regulation: Systematic Review of Regulatory Dynamics and Legislative Pathways in Major Economies
5. Future Potential: Analyzing how stablecoins can become a global payment network, the purchasing power of US Treasuries, and the competitive relationship with CBDCs.
6. Risk Warning: Covers potential challenges such as decoupling, audit transparency, systemic attacks, and money laundering regulatory issues.

The report also specifically points out that non-U.S. dollar stablecoins are still in the early stages of development: the market capitalization of euro stablecoins is less than $500 million, while the market capitalization of stablecoins for currencies like the yen, pound, and won is mostly in the tens of millions of dollars, indicating significant room for expansion in the future.