Overview of the Global Stablecoin Industry Development in 2025: Dollar Stablecoins Dominate the Market, USDC Grows Rapidly

2025 is an important year in the development of stablecoins. In this year, stablecoins have set new highs in market size and trading activity, while regulatory policies and capital attention have also significantly increased. This asset class, which originally originated as a "safe haven" tool within the cryptocurrency market, is gradually expanding into the forefront of global payments, cross-border trade, decentralized financial infrastructure, and even sovereign credit.

A recently released report titled "2025 Global Stablecoin Industry Development Report" points out 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.

USD Stablecoins Hold Absolute Dominance

Research has found that the US dollar stablecoin occupies an absolute dominant position in the global stablecoin market, with a circulation of 256.4 billion USD. In contrast, stablecoins from other countries' fiat currencies are still in their infancy, with the euro stablecoin ranking second at only 490 million USD. Other fiat currency stablecoins, such as the Japanese yen, British pound, South Korean won, and Turkish lira, have scales ranging from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of USD. This indicates that non-US dollar fiat currency stablecoins still have significant growth potential.

As of July 2025, the total market capitalization of global stablecoins has exceeded $250 billion, showing significant growth compared to 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 noteworthy that the total on-chain transfer volume reached $36.3 trillion, surpassing the total annual transaction volume of traditional payment giants, becoming a new cornerstone of the global payment network. In addition, USDC has shown significant growth in 2025, reaching 40.9%. If this growth rate continues, it is expected to surpass USDT around 2030.

Multiple Driving Forces Behind the Development of Stablecoins

The rapid development of stablecoins is not a coincidence, but the result of multiple factors working together:

1. Major economies are gradually advancing stablecoin legislation, and the regulatory environment is becoming increasingly clear.
2. Traditional finance and tech giants are increasingly entering the stablecoin space.
3. A stablecoin issuing company successfully went public, sparking the imagination of the capital markets regarding stablecoins.
4. Users from multiple high-inflation countries view stablecoins as a "digital dollar" hedging tool.
5. Emerging application scenarios such as decentralized finance, tokenization of physical assets, and payment settlement continue to create actual demand for stablecoins.

From the perspective of on-chain activity, the number of global monthly active stablecoin addresses has surpassed 30 million, and the total number of on-chain holding addresses has exceeded 168 million. According to data from a major payment giant, after excluding bots and exchange wallets, the proportion of transactions led by real users has increased from less than 15% in 2023 to approximately 22% at present, 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 gradually increased their investment in stablecoins:

• A certain stablecoin issuer successfully went public in the US stock market, with a market value approaching 100 billion RMB at one point, becoming the industry's first "quasi-systemic financial company."
• Multiple payment giants have launched their own stablecoins or have launched stablecoins on high-performance public chains.
• Some large technology companies have begun testing stablecoins in regulatory sandboxes, involving scenarios such as cross-border payments, investment transactions, and consumer settlements.
• Retail giants are promoting the direct use of stablecoins for online retail payments by collaborating with cryptocurrency companies.
• Emerging public chains attract a large number of stablecoin deployments due to low fees and high scalability, with the market value of stablecoins on some public chains growing by over 600% this year.

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

Structural Challenges Behind the Scale Fever

Despite the impressive performance of the market, stablecoins still face numerous structural challenges and controversies:

1. The "real usage scale" issue: Although the total transfer amount of stablecoins reaches 36 trillion USD, about 70% to 80% of this may consist of "virtual traffic" such as transfers by robots and within exchanges, and the actual usage scale by end users or enterprises still needs to be clarified further.

2. "Pegging Mechanism and Transparency" Issue: Some major stablecoins have not released complete audit reports, and their reserve asset structure and risk exposure have long been questioned by the market.

3. Regulatory policy differences: Different countries have varying regulatory policies for stablecoins. Some regions have not yet opened up to the use of stablecoins, while some markets actively take on the role of experimental fields for institutional innovation.

It is worth noting that the stablecoin legislation being promoted by the United States could profoundly affect the operational logic of existing mainstream stablecoins and the global compliance structure.

Looking to the Future

As stablecoins become increasingly important in global payment networks, their future development potential is mainly reflected in the following aspects:

1. Become an important part of the global payment network.
2. Plays an important role in the US Treasury market.
3. Forming a competitive and cooperative relationship with central bank digital currencies (CBDC) of various countries.

However, the development of stablecoins still faces many risks, including de-pegging risks, audit transparency issues, systemic attack threats, and challenges in money laundering regulation.

Overall, the stablecoin market in 2025 is characterized by rapid growth alongside structural challenges. As the regulatory environment becomes clearer and application scenarios continue to expand, stablecoins are expected to play an increasingly important role in the global financial system in the future.