A statistical analysis of the real-world usage of stablecoins: Over 170 million stablecoins globally, with over 90% flowing to DEXs and CEXs.

Author: Dune

Compiled by: Felix, PANews

Dune recently partnered with Steakhouse Financial to release a stablecoin dataset. This dataset covers dimensions such as holder composition, fund flows, on-chain behavior classification, and circulation velocity, providing a basis for institutional analysis, research reports, compliance monitoring, and high-level decision-making. Through an analysis of the dataset, Dune published an article revealing some of the true state of the stablecoin market. Details are as follows.

Everyone's citing stablecoin supply data. It's everywhere—in every report, every earnings call, every policy hearing. But beyond the figure of "over $300 billion in circulation," how much do we really know about stablecoins?

Who holds them? What is the ownership concentration? What is their velocity of circulation? On which blockchains do they run? What is their actual use? Is it for DeFi liquidity, payments, or simply idle capital?

With Meta announcing plans to integrate third-party stablecoin payments into its platform; Bridge receiving approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish a National Trust Bank; Payoneer enabling stablecoin functionality for 2 million merchants; and Anchorage Digital launching compliant stablecoin services for non-US banks, institutions and regulators are entering the fray in large numbers, and the answers they need are far more profound than a supply figure.

We used Dune's newly released stablecoin dataset to answer these questions. Here's what the data reveals:

Supply Overview

As of January 2026, the fully diluted supply of the 15 largest stablecoins on EVM-compatible chains, Solana, and Tron reached $304 billion, a year-on-year increase of 49%. Tether's USDT ($197 billion) and Circle's USDC ($73 billion) still account for 89% of the market share.

By blockchain, Ethereum reached $176 billion (58%); Tron reached $84 billion (28%); Solana reached $15 billion (5%); and BNB Chain reached $13 billion (4%). Despite the total supply nearly doubling, the supply distribution across blockchains has remained almost unchanged over the past year.

Source: Dune

However, aside from the two major stablecoins, 2025 was a "year of challengers." USDS (Sky Ecosystem) saw its market capitalization increase by 376% to $6.3 billion. PYUSD (PayPal) saw its market capitalization increase by 753% to $2.8 billion. RLUSD (Ripple)'s market capitalization surged from $58 million to $1.1 billion, a staggering increase of 1803%. USDG's market capitalization increased 52-fold. And USD1's market capitalization jumped from zero to $5.1 billion.

However, not all challengers saw growth. USD0 fell by 66%, while Ethena's USDe peaked in October (nearly tripling) and closed the year up 23%. Even so, the group of competitors below USDT and USDC continued to expand significantly.

Who holds stablecoins

Most stablecoin datasets only tell you the total supply. Because our dataset tracks wallet-level balances and address tags, it tells you who holds these stablecoins.

Source: Dune

On EVM and Solana, CEXs are the largest known holding category, with a size of $80 billion (compared to $58 billion last year). Stablecoins remain primarily an exchange's trading and settlement infrastructure. Whale wallets hold $39 billion. Yield protocol holdings have nearly doubled to $9.3 billion, reflecting the growth of on-chain yield strategies. Issuer addresses (vaults and minting/burning contracts) jumped 4.6 times from $2.2 billion to $10.2 billion, directly reflecting the scale of new supply entering the market.

Regarding tag quality: Only 23% of the supply is in completely unidentified addresses. This is an extremely high identification rate for on-chain data. This is crucial for understanding the actual sources of risk in stablecoins.

There are 172 million holders, but the concentration is extremely high.

As of February 2026, 172 million unique addresses held at least one of these 15 stablecoins. Of these, USDT accounted for 136 million, USDC for 36 million, and DAI for 4.7 million. The distribution of these three stablecoins is very broad: the top 10 wallets hold only 23-26% of the supply, and their HHI (Hirschman Index, a standard indicator of economic concentration, where 0 represents complete dispersion and 1.0 represents only one holder) is below 0.03.

Source: Dune

However, the situation is quite different for other stablecoins. The top 10 wallets hold 60-99% of the supply. Despite a circulating supply of $6.9 billion for USDS, 90% is concentrated in 10 wallets (HHI 0.48); for USDF, 99% is concentrated in the top 10 (HHI 0.54); and for USD0, it's the most extreme, with 99% concentrated in the top 10 (HHI 0.84). This means that even among these large holders, the supply is dominated by one or two wallets.

Source: Dune

This doesn't necessarily mean there's something wrong with these stablecoins; some are newer, and some are intentionally manipulated by institutions. However, it does mean their supply data should be treated differently from USDT or USDC. Concentration affects the risk of de-pegging, liquidity depth, and whether the supply reflects natural demand or the demand of a few large players. Such analysis can only be conducted when the balances of all holders are known, rather than relying solely on aggregated data from minting/burning events.

January transfers reached $10.3 trillion.

In January, stablecoin transaction volume on EVM, Solana, and Tron reached $10.3 trillion, more than double that of January 2025. The distribution of on-chain transaction volume is noteworthy and starkly contrasts with its supply share: Base, with a supply of only $4.4 billion, leads with $5.9 trillion in transaction volume; Ethereum's transaction volume is $2.4 trillion; Tron's is $682 billion; Solana's is $544 billion; and BNB Chain's is $406 billion.

Source: Dune

By token, USDC dominates with $8.3 trillion, almost five times that of USDT ($1.7 trillion), despite having a supply 2.7 times smaller than USDT. USDC's transaction speed and frequency are significantly higher than USDT's. DAI's transaction volume is $138 billion, USDS's is $92 billion, and USD1's is $43 billion.

Importantly, this data is objective and neutral. The dataset does not pre-screen transactions based on a fixed interpretation of "real" economic activity; therefore, the totals may include traffic associated with arbitrage, bots, internal routing, or other automated activities. Our goal is to present an objective, complete picture of on-chain activity, allowing users the flexibility to apply their own filtering criteria. For example, removing bot-driven transaction volume, separating organic usage, or defining more realistic metrics for transaction activity.

What exactly do stablecoins do?

The transactions in this dataset are not only labeled as "transaction volume," but also categorized into specific on-chain activities:

January breakdown:

1. Market Infrastructure (DEX Trading and Liquidity):

DEX liquidity supply and withdrawals: $5.9 trillion. This is the largest single use case, reflecting the role of stablecoins as the underlying asset for on-chain market making.

DEX Swaps: $376 billion. Direct trading activity conducted through automated market makers.

Both types of data indicate that stablecoins primarily function as collateral for transactions and as liquidity infrastructure. It's noteworthy that trading volume is concentrated on incentive-driven activities such as yield farming and aggressive capital optimization, rather than purely transactional demand.

2. Leverage and Capital Efficiency (Loan + Flash Loan)

Flash loans (borrowing and repayment): $1.3 trillion. Automated arbitrage and liquidation cycle.

Lending activities: supply, borrowing, repayment, withdrawal, $137 billion. Represents on-chain short-term capital efficiency and structured credit.

3. Access channels (CEX and bridging)

CEX traffic: Deposits ($224 billion), withdrawals ($224 billion), internal transfers ($151 billion), totaling $599 billion.

Cross-chain bridge deposits and withdrawals: $28 billion. These flows demonstrate the important role stablecoins play between centralized exchanges and in cross-chain settlements.

4. Issuance Layer (Currency Operations)

Issuer operations: minting ($28 billion), destruction ($20 billion), de-anchoring ($23 billion), and other activities, totaling $106 billion. This is almost five times the $42 billion of the same period last year.

5. Revenue Agreement

Revenue protocol activities: $2.7 billion. This is a smaller but structurally important part, closely related to structured strategies and on-chain asset management.

Overall, 90% of the transaction volume flows through the identified activity categories, providing a detailed understanding of the flow of stablecoins at each layer of the on-chain technology stack.

Velocity of Circulation: The Same Token, Different Worlds

Daily turnover rate (transaction volume divided by supply) is perhaps the most underestimated metric in stablecoin analysis. It reflects the activity of stablecoins as a medium of exchange, not just their holdings.

Among the tokens we analyzed, USDC and USDT once again stood out, despite the differences between them.

Source: Dune

USDC has the fastest circulation speed on L2 and Solana. On Base, USDC's daily circulation speed is as high as 14 times, mainly due to the high-frequency trading activity in DeFi. On Solana and Polygon, it is about 1 time; on Ethereum, it reaches 0.9 times, with almost its entire supply being traded daily.

USDT has the fastest circulation speed on BNB and Tron. The average daily circulation speed on BNB Chain is 1.4x, reflecting its active trading activity; on Tron, the average daily circulation speed is 0.3x, with lower but exceptionally stable trading volume, consistent with its role as a primary channel for cross-border payments. On Ethereum, however, the average daily circulation speed of USDT is only 0.2x, with over $100 billion in supply largely idle.

The slower transaction speeds of USDe and USDS are intentional. USDe on Ethereum has a daily velocity of only 0.09x, while USDS has a daily velocity of 0.5x. Both are designed as yield-generating stablecoins: USDe is typically staked in sUSDe to capture yields from Ethereum's Delta-neutral strategy; while USDS is deposited into Sky Savings Rate to earn protocol-funded yields. Therefore, a significant portion of the supply remains idle in savings contracts, lending markets like Aave, or structured yield loops. This low velocity is not a disadvantage, but rather an advantage: these assets are designed to accumulate yield, not circulate it.

The blockchain is more important than the token. PYUSD on Solana has a daily circulation velocity of 0.6 times, which is four times that of Ethereum (0.1 times). The same token has drastically different usage patterns in different ecosystems.

Supply and trading volume each reflect part of the situation. Velocity of circulation links the two, measuring, as a single metric, whether a stablecoin on a particular chain is functioning as active infrastructure or existing as idle funds.

Beyond the dollar

This analysis focuses on 15 USD stablecoins, but the complete dataset covers a much broader range. It tracks over 200 stablecoins representing more than 20 currencies: the Euro (17 tokens, $990 million in supply), the Brazilian Real ($141 million), the Japanese Yen ($13 million), and tokens denominated in the Nigerian Naira, Kenyan Shilling, South African Rand, Turkish Lira, Indonesian Rupiah, and Singapore Dollar, among others.

Source: Dune

While the current supply of non-USD stablecoins is only $1.2 billion, 59 tokens are already available across six continents, accounting for nearly 30% of the total number of tokens in the data. The infrastructure for local currency stablecoins is being built on-chain, and data to track their development is ready.

Related reading: The Hidden War Behind Stablecoins: Who Will Be the "Biggest Winner"—Issuers, Apps, and Users?