Stablecoin Supply Shatters Records: Hits $283.2 Billion with 25.2 Million Monthly Senders

Digital dollars hit escape velocity as stablecoin adoption rockets past traditional finance metrics.

The New Plumbing

While Wall Street debates fractional reserve theories, blockchain networks process $283.2 billion in stable assets monthly—serving 25.2 million unique addresses that actually use the system. These aren't speculative positions gathering dust in cold storage; they're payments, remittances, and DeFi transactions moving at internet speed.

Adoption Metrics That Matter

The sender count—often overlooked in price-obsessed analyses—reveals organic usage growth that dwarfs legacy payment innovation timelines. Each of those 25.2 million monthly participants represents a real-world use case that bypasses banking hours and cross-border friction.

Traditional finance responds by debating CBDC designs while actual dollar-pegged tokens achieve what their digital currency projects promised a decade ago. The infrastructure isn't coming—it's already here, processing volumes that would make some national payment systems blush.

Maybe the real digital transformation was the stablecoins we made along the way.

Trump signs GENIUS Act, firms move fast

Behind this wave of funding is one thing: regulation. President Donald TRUMP signed the GENIUS Act earlier this year. The law gave the stablecoin industry the clarity it’s been begging for. Ron Tarter, CEO of MNEE, called it a “green light for corporate America, legitimizing the industry.”

And Wall Street is listening. The total capitalization of all stablecoins has now passed $297 billion, a new peak. At Coinbase, analysts are betting that the market will shoot up to $1 trillion by 2028.

Circle, the firm behind USDC, held its initial public offering in June and raised $1 billion in the process. Its shares are trading at $144 right now. When combined with fundraising by Figure Technologies and other centralized and RWA-focused entities, total investment in the space has crossed $2.4 billion this year.

Traditional finance isn’t sitting still. Payments giant Stripe is building its own stablecoin. So are Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America. Meanwhile, Societe Generale’s crypto division, SG-FORGE, launched a token called USDCV. Over at JPMorgan, executives confirmed the release of their JPMD coin, built on the Base blockchain.

Coinbase battles banks as new products roll out

Not everyone is happy. Banking lobby groups are pissed. They argue the GENIUS Act puts banks at a disadvantage because stablecoin firms can offer interest-like perks. Banks can’t do that without extra restrictions. And that difference, they claim, could pull over $6 trillion out of traditional bank deposits.

Coinbase isn’t having it. Faryar Shirzad, the exchange’s policy chief, said the banks just want to keep their $187 billion annual cut from transaction fees. He called their warning a “myth.”

Tensions boiled over this week as Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, and other crypto execs headed to Capitol Hill. Banks want lawmakers to stop platforms like Coinbase from offering customers high-yield rewards. Brian wasn’t amused. “They should have to compete on a level playing field in crypto,” he told said on Wednesday, as Cryptopolitan reported.

Right now, Coinbase gives 4.1% on USDC holdings. Kraken offers 5.5% on the same. That’s way above what banks are paying on savings.

Meanwhile on Monday, the Plasma blockchain project, which is backed by Bitfinex, revealed Plasma One, a neobank built from scratch for stablecoin usage. The app includes zero-fee USDT transfers, card payments with built-in rewards, and near-instant issuance of VIRTUAL cards. Plasma says early access will launch in stages, focusing on users in regions with weak access to U.S. dollars.

Plasma’s goal is to be a full-stack platform for stablecoin users. Even with all the gains, there’s a problem: the front-end experience is messy. Murat Firat, Head of Product at Plasma, says that’s not enough. “Infrastructure alone is not enough,” he said, arguing that better interfaces are needed to drive daily adoption.

Over at Standard Chartered, analysts said in July that clients were more interested in stablecoins than Bitcoin. In September, JPMorgan analysts warned that the wave of new tokens could lead to a brutal zero-sum race between issuers.

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