Tether’s $150B Juggernaut Leaves Visa and PayPal in the Dust—Stablecoins Eat Traditional Finance’s Lunch
Move over, legacy payment rails—Tether’s USDT just blasted past $150 billion in circulating supply, officially dwarfing transaction volumes handled by old-guard giants like Visa and PayPal. The stablecoin’s relentless growth exposes the sluggishness of traditional finance, where ’innovation’ means adding another fee layer.
Who needs SWIFT when you’ve got blockchain? Tether’s dominance highlights crypto’s end-run around bureaucratic bottlenecks—while Wall Street still debates ’digital transformation,’ stablecoins are executing it at scale. Just don’t ask the SEC to admit it.
Fun fact: That $150B could buy 37 million ounces of gold... or one mediocre Manhattan office tower post-crash.
Growing volumes
Artemis data shows the growing dominance of stablecoins in transactional finance. During the week of Jan. 20, stablecoins processed approximately $654.9 billion, exceeding the combined Visa and PayPal volume of $351.2 billion by more than $303.7 billion.
Other weeks with large spreads included Jan. 13 ($282.1 billion), Jan. 6 ($278.9 billion), Jan. 27 ($266.3 billion), and Feb. 3 ($242.5 billion), demonstrating a consistent margin of leadership during the start of the year.
On average, stablecoins moved $521.3 billion in weekly value throughout 2025, surpassing Visa by 63% and outpacing PayPal by over 1,500%.
The momentum is boosted by traditional financial companies recent push into the stablecoin sector due to expectations of a friendlier regulatory environment under President Donald Trump’s administration.
Adapting to the market
This strong performance comes after stablecoinslast year, surpassing Visa and Mastercard combined volumes by 7.7%.
However, the traditional payments landscape giants are quickly adapting to this new reality and contributing to these developments.
Visa announced ain October 2024, resulting in more stablecoins. Moreover, the payment firmstablecoin-powered cards in Latin America.
Meanwhile, Mastercard reported to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) the. Like Visa, Mastercard alsothat allows users to make payments with stablecoins.
PayPal launched its stablecoin, the PayPal USD (PYUSD), in August 2023. After surpassing $1 billion in circulating supply in August 2024, PYUSD’s market cap slowly slid below $450 million in December of the same year.
However, PYUSD adoption, climbing 95% since February to nearly $930 million as of May 12.