2025 Stablecoin Industry Development Report: USD Stablecoins Dominate the Market, USDC Has Huge Growth Potential

2025 is a key year in the development of stablecoins. In this year, stablecoins have reached new highs in both market scale and trading activity, while regulatory policies and capital attention have also significantly increased. This asset class, initially serving as a "safe haven" tool within the crypto market, is gradually expanding into multiple cutting-edge areas such as global payments, cross-border trade, DeFi infrastructure, and even sovereign credit.

A recently published industry report indicates 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 and systematic analysis of the stablecoin industry from six dimensions: development history, market structure, application scenarios, global regulation, development potential, and potential risks.

US Dollar stablecoins dominate the market

The report shows that in the global stablecoin market, USDC dominates with an issuance volume of 256.4 billion USD. In contrast, stablecoins pegged to other national fiat currencies are still in their infancy. The second-largest stablecoin, the euro stablecoin, has a size of only 490 million USD, while stablecoins such as the yen, pound, won, and lira range from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of USD. This indicates that non-USD fiat stablecoins still have significant room for growth.

As of July 2025, the total market capitalization of global stablecoins has exceeded $250 billion, a significant rise compared to the beginning of the year. Among them, the two major stablecoins, USDT and USDC, together account for 86.5% of the market share, forming a duopoly in the stablecoin sector. It is worth noting that the total on-chain transfer amount of stablecoins that year reached $36.3 trillion, surpassing the annual transaction totals of Visa and Mastercard, becoming a new cornerstone of the global payment network.

The rise of USDC in 2025 is particularly strong, with an annual growth rate of 40.9%. Based on this growth rate, USDC is expected to surpass USDT around 2030, becoming the largest stablecoin by market size.

Multiple Forces Driving the Explosive Rise of Stablecoins

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

1. Major economies such as the United States, the European Union, and Hong Kong are gradually advancing stablecoin legislation, and the regulatory environment is becoming increasingly clear.

2. Many traditional financial and technology giants are entering the stablecoin field.

3. A certain stablecoin issuance company successfully went public in the United States, igniting enthusiasm in the capital market for stablecoins.

4. Users in high-inflation countries such as Argentina, Turkey, and Nigeria view stablecoins as a "digital dollar" hedging tool.

5. Emerging application scenarios such as DeFi, 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 exceeded 30 million, and the total number of holding addresses has surpassed 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 around 22% currently, with the user structure gradually transitioning from arbitrage bots to enterprises and retail investors.

Stablecoins Enter the "Mainstream Battlefield"

The role of stablecoins is upgrading from "trading hedge anchor" to "mainstream asset in digital finance". Since the beginning of this year, many global tech giants and financial institutions have successively increased their investment in stablecoin layout:

• A certain stablecoin issuer successfully went public on 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 integrated stablecoin settlement on high-performance public chains.

• Large Chinese e-commerce and fintech companies are entering the Hong Kong stablecoin market, involving scenarios such as cross-border payments, investment transactions, and consumer settlements.

• International retail giants are promoting the direct use of stablecoins for online retail payments through partnerships with cryptocurrency companies.

• Emerging public chains are attracting a large number of stablecoin deployments due to low fees and high scalability, with the market value of stablecoins on a certain public chain having risen by over 600% this year.

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

Structural Challenges Behind the Scale Boom

Despite the market's strong performance, stablecoins still face numerous structural challenges and controversies:

1. Real usage scale issue: Although the total transfer amount of stablecoins reaches 36 trillion USD, about 70% to 80% of it may be composed of "virtual traffic" such as transfers by bots and within exchanges, and the actual usage scale by individuals or enterprises still needs to be further defined.

2. Pegging mechanism and transparency issues: The market-leading stablecoins have yet to release a complete audit report issued by top accounting firms, and their reserve asset structure and risk exposure have long been a focal point of market controversy.

3. Regulatory policy differences: Countries have varying attitudes towards the regulation of stablecoins, with some regions yet to open up for use, while markets such as Hong Kong and Singapore actively take on the role of testing grounds for institutional innovation.

It is worth noting that the U.S. "GENIUS Act" has clearly stated that stablecoins are not securities, prohibits algorithmic stablecoins, and requires that reserves be 100% high liquidity assets (such as cash and short-term U.S. Treasury bonds). If this legislation comes into effect, it will profoundly affect the operational logic of existing mainstream stablecoins and the global compliance structure.

A Comprehensive Overview of the Evolution of Stablecoins from Six Dimensions

The report provides a comprehensive overview of the development of stablecoins from the following six dimensions using on-chain statistics, classification tracking, and cross-validation of public information:

1. Development History: A review of the ten-year evolution of stablecoins, from the earliest BitUSD to today's mainstream stablecoins.

2. Market Landscape: Detailed explanation of the current dual oligopoly structure, distribution of issuance shares among various public chains, and trends in monthly active users, among other key data.

3. Application Scenarios: Focus on the key role of stablecoins in cross-border payments, DeFi, retail payments, and the tokenization of physical assets.

4. Global Regulation: Systematic overview of the regulatory dynamics and legislative paths of major economies such as China, the United States, the European Union, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea.

5. Future Potential: Analyzing how stablecoins could become a global payment network, the purchasing power of US government bonds, and the competitive and cooperative relationship with central bank digital currencies.

6. Risk Warning: Covers potential challenges such as depegging, audit transparency, systemic attacks, and anti-money laundering regulatory issues.

The report also particularly points out that non-USD stablecoins are still in the early stages of development: the market capitalization of euro stablecoins is less than 500 million USD, while the market capitalization of stablecoins for currencies such as the yen, pound, and won is mostly in the tens of millions of USD, indicating significant expansion potential in the future.