Records and trends: key facts about stablecoins in 2024-2025

In 2024-2025, stablecoins are setting records in market capitalization, transaction volumes, and other key indicators.

1. Stablecoin market capitalization grew 12.5 times in five years

According to monitoring services, the total market capitalization of stablecoins increased from $20 billion to $257 billion between 2020 and 2025, reaching an all-time high.

In just one and a half years, this figure nearly doubled: by the beginning of 2024, it had risen to $123 billion. This is due to both growing interest in cryptocurrencies and the emergence of new stablecoins, including in European and American markets.

As of June 2025, stablecoins make up more than 8% of the total market capitalization of digital assets.

2. Nearly 90% of the market capitalization belongs to the top four stablecoins

The combined market capitalization of the largest stablecoins in the crypto market, Tether (USDT), USD Coin (USDC), DAI, and Ethena USDe (USDe), as of June 2025, totals $230 billion out of $257.3 billion.

Tether (USDT), the largest stablecoin and the third-largest cryptocurrency, accounts for more than 60% of the market capitalization. In comparison, the market capitalization of the fifth-largest stablecoin, World Liberty Financial USD (USD1), is less than 1% of this segment.

3. Tether leads in trading volume

Although Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) are the largest by market capitalization, the stablecoin USDT surpasses them in daily trading volumes, as it is used in the majority of trading pairs on exchanges.

According to CoinMarketCap, as of June 2025, the daily trading volume of USDT exceeds $62.2 billion. This puts Tether ahead of Bitcoin and Ethereum combined. Compared to June of the previous year, this figure has grown 1.5–2 times.

4. Tether lags behind USDC in the DeFi market

Despite being the most capitalized stablecoin, Tether is less commonly used in decentralized finance (DeFi) than USDC. Analysts estimate that USDC accounts for 40% of the total locked value (TVL) in DeFi protocols among stablecoins.

In comparison, Tether's share is only about 25%. Analysts suggest that USDC's popularity stems from its status as a regulated asset in the European market, functioning under the new Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) legislation. Furthermore, USDC offers greater transparency and better regulatory compliance compared to Tether, which has faced issues with reserve reporting.

It is also worth noting that, in terms of market capitalization growth, USDC has outpaced USDT, with a 90% increase compared to a 40% increase for USDT.

5. More than half of transactions are in stablecoins

According to research by TRM Labs, stablecoins account for approximately 60% of all cryptocurrency transactions, and their share has nearly doubled over the last two years. For comparison, in 2023, stablecoins accounted for only up to 35% of cryptocurrency transactions. Of course, more than 60% of all transactions in stablecoins are carried out using the leading token in this segment, USDT.

Moreover, according to the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), between 70% and 80% of all transactions on secondary markets involving crypto assets and stablecoins occur without the use of fiat currencies.

All of these points point to the growing role of stablecoins in payments, including international transactions.

6. Stablecoin transfers surpassed $2 trillion in volume for the first time in a quarter.

According to Visa's payment giant analytics platform, the volume of stablecoin transactions for the first quarter of 2025 reached $2.04 trillion. This is a 40% increase compared to the same period last year.

Over 60% of this volume (about $1.2 trillion) came from Tether, while USDC accounted for about 38%.

7. Illegal transactions in stablecoins were less than 1% in 2024

According to TRM Labs' analytics service, more than 99% of all transactions involving stablecoins in 2024 were legal. Analysts note that stablecoins are primarily used for payments, decentralized finance (DeFi) operations, e-commerce, and cross-border transactions.

This trend is linked to the fact that issuers of centralized stablecoins, such as Tether for USDT and Circle for USDC, are actively blocking addresses associated with criminal activity.

As of June 2025, according to Dune Analytics, Tether had blocked about 1.4 billion USDT on more than 2200 addresses.

8. The USA and Singapore lead in stablecoin transaction volumes

The USA continues to lead in both the number of cryptocurrency holders and Bitcoin mining hash rates, as well as stablecoin transaction volumes. However, contrary to expectations, Singapore matches the USA in this indicator, with both countries accounting for 20% of all stablecoin transactions.

Following them are Hong Kong, Japan, and the UK in terms of stablecoin transactions. However, the use of stablecoins is rapidly gaining momentum in developing countries like Turkey, Thailand, Georgia, Brazil, and Venezuela.

The rising popularity of stablecoins in these countries is attributed to high inflation levels. For instance, in 2024, inflation rates in Turkey and Venezuela were approximately 65% and 48%, respectively. Thus, stablecoins have become one of the few accessible means of protecting against high inflation in developing countries.

9. In 2024, USDT surpassed Visa in transaction volume

In June 2024, a record volume of USDT transactions was recorded on the Tron network. In this regard, Tether surpassed the payment giant Visa for the first time, with $53 billion compared to Visa's $42 billion.

The growing interest in stablecoins and cryptocurrency payments has prompted international payment systems, such as Visa and Mastercard, to add support for payments in digital assets. In May 2025, Visa launched a platform that supports stablecoin payments.

In 2023, Visa partnered with the Solana ecosystem to support USDC payments. Visa is also developing solutions to issue payment crypto cards that can be used to pay in USDT and USDC. While the technology is still being tested in some Latin American countries, it plans to expand to other regions, including Europe, Asia, and Africa.

10. USDT issued a record $30 billion in a month

May 2024 set a record for the number of USDT tokens issued, with an average of $1 billion per day. As a result, Tether issued about $30 billion in USDT during that month.

Since the beginning of 2025, the issuance of Tether has increased by nearly 15%, or by 20.5 billion USDT. Over the past year, Tether has issued more than 45 billion new USDT tokens.