Stablecoin Market Development Report: Dollar Stablecoins Dominate, USDC May Surpass USDT by 2030

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

A recently published "2025 Global Stablecoin Industry Development Report" indicates 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 provides a comprehensive analysis of the stablecoin industry from six dimensions: development history, market structure, application scenarios, global regulation, development potential, and potential risks.

US Dollar stablecoins dominate

The report shows that in the global stablecoin market, US dollar stablecoins hold an absolute advantage, with an issuance of 256.4 billion USD. In contrast, fiat stablecoins from other countries are still in their infancy, with the second-ranked euro stablecoin only at 49 million USD. Other fiat stablecoins such as 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 room for development.

As of July 2025, the total market capitalization of global stablecoins has exceeded $250 billion, showing a significant increase since the beginning of the year. Among them, the combined market capitalization 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 amount reached $36.3 trillion, surpassing the total annual transaction volume of Visa and Mastercard, becoming a new cornerstone of the global payment network. In addition, USDC has shown significant growth in 2025, with an annual growth rate of 40.9%. Based on this growth rate, USDC is expected to surpass USDT around 2030.

This growth trend is not a flash in the pan, but the result of multiple factors working together:

1. Major economies are successively promoting stablecoin legislation, and the regulatory path is becoming increasingly clear;
2. Traditional finance and tech giants are entering the market.
3. The parent company of USDC successfully went public, igniting the imagination of the capital market regarding stablecoins.
4. Regions with high inflation in multiple countries regard it as a "digital dollar" hedge tool;
5. Emerging scenarios such as DeFi, RWA, and payment settlement continue to inject actual demand for stablecoins.

From the perspective of on-chain activity, the number of monthly active stablecoin addresses worldwide has exceeded 30 million, while the total number of on-chain holding addresses has surpassed 168 million. The proportion of transactions led by real users has increased from less than 15% in 2023 to around 22% currently, with the user structure gradually transitioning from arbitrage bots to enterprises and retail investors.

Stablecoins Enter the "Mainstream Battlefield"

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

• The stablecoin issuer successfully listed on the US stock market, with a market value approaching 100 billion RMB, becoming the first "quasi-systemic financial company" in the stablecoin industry;
• A major payment giant launched its own stablecoin and went live on a high-performance public blockchain;
• A financial services company introduces USDC with a payment processor in B2B settlements;
• 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 trading, and consumer settlement;
• Retail giants are promoting the use of stablecoins directly for online retail payments by collaborating with cryptocurrency exchanges.
• New public chains like Base and Solana attract a large amount of stablecoin deployment due to low fees and high scalability, with Solana's stablecoin market cap growing by over 600% this year.

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

Structural Challenges Behind the Scale Boom

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

1. "Real usage scale" issue: Although the total transfer amount of stablecoins reaches 36 trillion USD, as much as 70-80% of it consists of "virtual traffic" such as transfers by bots and internal transfers within exchanges, the actual usage scale at the C-end or enterprise end still needs further exploration and definition.

2. "Anchor Mechanism and Transparency" Issue: Although USDT is at the top of the industry, it has yet to release a complete audit report issued by the "Big Four Accounting Firms", and its reserve asset structure and risk exposure have long been a point of contention in the market; while USDC is more transparent and compliant, it still lags behind USDT in terms of application proliferation and ecosystem integration.

3. Regulatory policy differences: There are still differences and games among 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 a testing ground for institutional innovation.

It is worth noting that the U.S. "GENIUS Act" has clearly defined that stablecoins are not considered securities, prohibits algorithmic stablecoins, and requires reserves to be 100% high-liquidity assets (such as cash and short-term U.S. Treasury bonds). If this legislation is formally enacted, it will profoundly impact the operational logic of existing mainstream stablecoins and the global compliance structure.

Report Highlights: A Panoramic View of the Evolutionary Path of Stablecoins Across Six Dimensions

This report comprehensively analyzes the development of stablecoins using on-chain statistics, classification tracking, and cross-verification of public information, covering the following six dimensions:

1. Development history: From BitUSD to USDT, DAI, USDC, reviewing the ten-year evolution of stablecoins;
2. Market Landscape: Detailed analysis of the "USDT+USDC" dual oligopoly structure, public chain issuance share distribution, monthly active user trends, and other core data;
3. Application Scenarios: Focus on the key role of stablecoins in cross-border payments, DeFi, retail payments, and RWA.
4. Global Regulation: Systematically sorting out the regulatory dynamics and legislative paths of major economies such as the US, Europe, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea.
5. Future Potential: Analyze how stablecoins can become a global payment network, the purchasing power of US Treasury bonds, and the competition and cooperation relationships with CBDCs.
6. Risk Warning: Covers potential challenges such as depegging, audit transparency, systemic attacks, and money laundering regulatory issues.

The report also specifically points out that non-USD stablecoins are still in the early stages of development: the market capitalization of euro stablecoins is less than 500 million USD, while the market capitalizations of yen, pound, won, and other currency stablecoins are mostly in the tens of millions of USD, indicating there is still huge room for expansion in the future.