The evolution of stablecoins is unfolding rapidly, with substantial growth propelled by key regulatory advancements and strategic acquisitions by major Web2 companies. Outstanding supply now exceeds $240 billion, while 12-month on-chain transfer volume reached $15.6 trillion in 2024, matching Visa’s network throughput. At this growth rate, we expect the aggregate market value of stablecoins to approach $2 trillion by 2028.

Yet scale alone does not capture the full picture, the distribution of circulating supply is beginning to rebalance as competitive dynamics among issuers intensify. USDT retains roughly 63% of circulating supply, USDC accounts for 25%, and the remaining 12% is split among DAI, Ethena’s USDe, Paypal’s PYUSD, Bridge’s USDB and a growing long-tail of newer entrants. While Tether continues to dominate float, USDC now leads in transaction value and has regained ground since Q4-24 as institutional users prioritise transparency and regulatory alignment.

USDT and USDC are the leading stablecoins

Source: Artemis

Recent federal regulatory actions have cleared most of the legal uncertainty surrounding the sector. In February the SEC, under its newly appointed chair Paul Atkins, adopted a tailored “certificate” disclosure regime for yield-bearing stablecoins, thereby legitimising tokenised treasury-bill wrappers without subjecting them to the full panoply of securities law. Congress followed with two bills. The bipartisan GENIUS Act, already through the House Financial Services Committee, would confirm that payment-oriented stablecoins—whether interest-bearing or not—are not securities. Meanwhile, the STABLE Act, introduced in May this year, would permit federally regulated banks to issue tokenized deposits and to provide custody for stablecoins.

The private sector reacted swiftly. In February, Stripe made its largest acquisition to date, acquiring Bridge, a developer-centric platform whose USDB token is backed by BlackRock’s money-market funds and whose APIs abstract compliance and settlement. Integrating Bridge should cut Stripe’s cross-border costs to roughly 1.5 percent or about half the fee burden of legacy card rails. Visa then partnered with Bridge to embed identical functionality in VisaNet, greatly extending its distribution reach. Lastly, Fidelity shared its plan for its own token signalling that traditional asset managers likewise view tokenized cash as a core product.

Taken together, these regulatory and corporate developments have far-reaching macro-financial consequences, particularly for U.S. Treasury demand. Because leading issuers back their stablecoins with short-term government bills, stablecoins issuers are becoming structural buyers that could eventually rival foreign sovereign holders. Stablecoin issuers already own more than US $120 billion in short-term Treasuries—placing them 19th globally, ahead of nations such as the UAE—and a US $2 trillion stable-coin market could push that figure toward US $1 trillion. This growing linkage is likely to stabilize Treasury funding while extending the dollar’s global reach.

Stablecoin issuers are becoming big holders of US treasuries

Source: Spartan Capital, US Treasury Data

Beyond the capital-markets impact, the everyday economics are compelling: they are faster, cheaper, and more reliable than traditional payment methods. While traditional cross-border payments can take days and incur high fees, stablecoin transactions settle in minutes at a fraction of the cost. In fact, stablecoin transfers on high throughput blockchains like Solana or Ethereum L2s can cost only pennies compared to the 2-3% fees charged by traditional financial systems. That edge shows up in the data. Rolling thirty-day figures already show stablecoins surpassing ACH, PayPal and Western-Union-style networks—and, on several occasions, overtaking Visa in daily settlement flow.

A final catalyst merits attention: Circle, the issuer of USDC, filed its S-1 registration in early April and is expected to list on the NYSE within the next two to three months. The offering will establish the first public-market valuation benchmark for a pure-play stablecoin issuer and, by extension, for the economics of tokenized cash. Successful execution should further institutionalize the asset class and reinforce the sector’s migration into mainstream financial infrastructure.

The developments of 2025 indicate that stablecoins are no longer a niche innovation but are on the cusp of mainstream integration into both traditional finance and the broader digital asset ecosystem. With regulatory frameworks being solidified, corporate acquisitions accelerating, and the market expanding exponentially, stablecoins are reshaping global finance. Their role in payments, treasury markets, and dollar hegemony is becoming increasingly significant, and the coming years will likely see further acceleration in their adoption across financial markets and industries.