I just went through the latest Dune analysis on stablecoins, and there are some really interesting insights that we tend to overlook. Everyone cites that 300 billion in circulation figure, but no one really questions what’s behind it. Who is holding these assets? What is the level of concentration? Where is the money flowing?

The data shows that the stablecoin market has grown significantly. The total diluted supply among the top 15 stablecoins on EVM, Solana, and Tron reached $304 billion by January, a 49% increase compared to the previous year. USDT and USDC continue to dominate, accounting for 89% of the market. USDT is around $189 billion now, while USDC reached $77 billion. Ethereum remains the main chain with 58% of the supply, followed by Tron with 28%.

But the most exciting part is seeing how challengers grew in 2025. USDS jumped 376% to $11 billion. PayPal’s PYUSD grew 753% to $3.5 billion. Ripple’s RLUSD had an astonishing growth of 1,803%. USD1 went from zero to $2.15 billion. This shows that the market is no longer a monopoly of just two players.

Now, when you look at who is actually holding these assets, the story looks quite different. Centralized exchanges hold $80 billion in stablecoins, up from $58 billion a year ago. Large holders have $39 billion. Yield protocols nearly doubled to $9.3 billion. But here’s the point: while USDT, USDC, and DAI have a broad distribution, with the top 10 wallets controlling only 23-26% of the supply, other stablecoins are completely centralized. USDS has 90% in just 10 wallets. USDF has 99%. And USD0 is extreme, with almost everything monopolized by one or two addresses.

The transfer volume is where things get really impressive. In January, $10.3 trillion was moved in stablecoins. But it’s not evenly distributed. Base led with $5.9 trillion, despite its supply being only $4.4 billion. Ethereum saw $2.4 trillion. USDC transferred $8.3 trillion — nearly five times more than USDT — even though it has 2.7 times less in circulation. This shows that USDC is being used much more actively.

What really differentiates one stablecoin from another is speed. USDC has a daily turnover of up to 14 times on Base, driven by high-frequency DeFi activities. USDT is slower on Ethereum, with just 0.2 times, but it’s the main stablecoin for cross-border payments on Tron. USDe and USDS have slower speeds because they are designed to generate yield — you deposit them to capture gains.

And there’s something many people don’t realize: the same token behaves completely differently depending on the chain. PYUSD on Solana has a volume 0.6x, over four times faster than on Ethereum with 0.1x. The chain matters more than the token itself.

But what really caught my attention was the expansion of stablecoins into local currencies. The dataset tracks over 200 stablecoins in more than 20 fiat currencies. The euro has 17 tokens with a supply of 990 million. The Brazilian real has 141 million. The Japanese yen has 13 million. There are tokens in Nigerian naira, Kenyan shilling, South African rand, Turkish lira, Indonesian rupiah, and Singapore dollar. The total volume is still just $1.2 billion, but there are already 59 tokens across six continents. It’s interesting to think that converting $420 into naira represents a real opportunity for financial inclusion in emerging markets, and these local currency stablecoins could be key to that.

What makes this dataset unique is the granularity. Each transfer is classified into activity categories. $5.9 trillion went into providing liquidity on DEXs. $376 billion in direct swaps. $1.3 trillion in flash loans for arbitrage. $599 billion in CEX flows. $1.06 trillion in issuer operations — minting, burning, rebalancing. That’s five times the record from a year ago.

Essentially, 90% of the volume went through identified activity categories, giving us a very clear view of how the money is actually flowing. It’s not just knowing that $10 trillion was transferred, but understanding why and for what purpose. And that completely changes how you interpret the stablecoin market.