In 2025, the stablecoin market will continue to grow rapidly. According to DeFiLlama data, as of May 26, 2025, the total supply of stablecoins (i.e., market value) has climbed to approximately US$246.382 billion, accounting for approximately 7.04% of the total supply of crypto assets.
This data is 9.5% higher than the data in Dune and Artemis' "2025 Stablecoin Status" report released in March 2025, which shows the rapid expansion of the application of stablecoins in the crypto asset ecosystem.
According to OKG Research, under the optimistic scenario that countries gradually set up compliance frameworks for crypto assets and institutions and individuals widely adopt stablecoins, the global stablecoin market supply is expected to reach 3 trillion US dollars in 2030, the monthly on-chain transaction volume will reach 9 trillion US dollars, and the annual transaction volume may exceed 100 trillion US dollars.
01 Overview of the Stablecoin Market
At present, the stablecoin USDT issued by Tether and the stablecoin USDC issued by Circle still dominate the stablecoin market. According to data released by CoinGecko in May 2025, the supply of these two stablecoins together accounts for 86.06% of the overall supply of the stablecoin market.
USDT
In May 2025, the total supply of USDT exceeded US$150 billion for the first time, reaching US$150.663 billion, accounting for 62% of all stablecoins. Its growth mainly relies on the payment needs of emerging markets, especially on TRON, where transactions are particularly active, with an average daily trading volume of nearly US$30 billion.
In April 2025, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino wrote that the number of users using USDT increased by 13% in the first quarter of 2025. At present, the application focus of USDT has gradually shifted to the P2P remittance market, and the adoption rate in institutions has a downward trend.
USDC
The USDC issued by Circle accounts for nearly 25% of the stablecoin market, making it the second largest stablecoin in the market.
USDC publishes audit reports monthly through third-party institutions, complies with the compliance requirements of the EU MiCA Act, and has established application cooperation with currency payment institutions such as Visa and Mastercard; mainstream DeFi protocols such as MakerDAO, Compound, Aave, and Curve also support the use of USDC.
Emerging stablecoins are gradually rising
According to the "2025 Stablecoin Report" released by Dune and Artemis, in addition to the two major stablecoin giants USDT and USDC, algorithmic stablecoins also maintain active applications in the DeFi ecosystem. The third-generation stablecoins (such as USDe) that use a hybrid collateral model are rewriting the market landscape.
Other emerging stablecoins that have attracted widespread attention in the market recently include: USDE issued by Ethena Labs, whose total supply has grown to US$7.082 billion in May 2025, making it the third largest stablecoin in the world in terms of supply; the total supply of USD1, a stablecoin issued by World Liberty Financial, a DeFi platform under the Trump family, in March 2025, has rapidly expanded to US$2.133 billion; the total supply of USD0 has reached US$641 million.
02 Application of stablecoins in Ethereum
In the Ethereum ecosystem, stablecoins play a key role in trading and lending scenarios. Not only can they serve as the underlying assets for participating in decentralized financial (DeFi) activities, they also play an important role in promoting Ethereum's overall transaction volume and asset liquidity.
Transaction scenarios:
According to Techinasia, in April 2025, the transaction volume of stablecoins on Ethereum reached US$908 billion. USDC has been a standout in this growth, with over $500 billion in trading volume over the past six months. Other stablecoins, such as DAI, have also seen active trading.
Lending scenarios:
DeFi protocols such as Aave and Compound on Ethereum support lending services for a variety of stablecoins. Users can deposit USDT, USDC, or DAI to earn interest, or use these stablecoins as collateral to borrow other assets. For example, Aave offers collateral services with an annualized yield (APY) of up to 14%, and Compound offers related services with an annualized yield of up to 12%.
Payment scenarios:
In 2021, Visa announced the use of USDC for payment settlement on Ethereum, becoming the first major payment network to use crypto assets for settlement.
Stablecoin payment platform Alchemy Pay has established a partnership with Ethereum Layer 2 network ZKFair, allowing users to use USDC to pay Gas fees, enabling more users to easily purchase assets.
Practices in cross-border settlement:
StraitsX has issued the Singapore dollar stablecoin XSGD and the Indonesian rupiah stablecoin XIDR on Ethereum and Zilliqa, aiming to solve the high cost and low efficiency problems in cross-border payments.
Case study of the combination of Layer2 solutions and stablecoins:
Tether and LayerZero jointly launched a multi-chain version of USDT - USDT0, based on LayerZero's Omnichain Fungible Token (OFT) standard, which realizes cross-chain transfers without intermediary bridging or packaging assets, and improves the liquidity and availability of stablecoins. MStableChain proposes a system that supports multiple stablecoins as transaction fees, aiming to provide stable transaction fees and flexible payment options. The system ensures compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) through multi-currency units and multi-type RPC mechanisms, promoting large-scale adoption.
03 Regulatory compliance examples
Hong Kong, China:On May 21, 2025, the Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China passed the "Stablecoin Bill", marking that Hong Kong, China has become the world's first jurisdiction to establish a full-chain regulatory system from fiat currency to stablecoin.
United States:As of May 22, 2025, the United States stablecoin "GENIUS Act" has entered the revision process. The core of the "GENIUS Act" includes key contents such as issuance qualification restrictions, reserve requirements, compliance obligations, user protection and international applicability. The bill clearly stipulates that the issuer must fully support the stablecoins it issues with equivalent high-liquidity assets to ensure that users can redeem them at any time. At the same time, in order to protect the interests of currency holders, if the issuer goes bankrupt, its assets should be used first to repay user funds. In addition, the issuer must strictly comply with compliance obligations such as anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing (CFT) to prevent stablecoins from being used for illegal purposes.
EU:The MiCA regulatory framework will take effect on December 31, 2024. It requires the reserve assets of stablecoin issuers to be transparent and auditable. USDC was adopted by Worldpay and other institutions because it was the first to obtain MiCA certification.
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