Dune has just released a very interesting dataset on stablecoins, and the numbers reveal much more than the classic "300 billion in circulation" we see everywhere.

The market grew 49% in the last year and reached $304 billion by April. USDT and USDC continue to dominate with 89% of the market, but the story below these two giants is completely different. USDS exploded 376%, PYUSD rose 753%, and RLUSD? Went from $58 million to $1.1 billion — an increase of nearly 1,800%. Some challengers are really gaining ground.

But here’s the detail few notice: total supply is just part of the story. What really matters is who is holding these coins. Data shows centralized exchanges hold $80 billion in stablecoins, while large holders have $39 billion. Yield protocols? Nearly doubled, reaching $9.3 billion. This reflects how on-chain strategies have evolved.

Concentration varies drastically. USDT and USDC have broad distribution — the top 10 wallets control only 23-26% of each. But take USDS: 90% concentrated in 10 wallets. USD0 is even more extreme, with 99% in a few addresses. It’s not necessarily a problem, but it means you need to interpret these data quite differently.

Now, volume is where it gets really impressive. In January, $10.3 trillion in stablecoins were transferred — more than double the previous year. Base led with $5.9 trillion despite having only $4.4 billion in supply. Ethereum had $2.4 trillion. Tron reached $682 billion. This shows that supply on a chain doesn’t determine activity volume.

USDC dominates in transfer speed — $8.3 trillion volume versus $1.7 trillion for USDT, even having 2.7 times less supply. On Base, USDC circulates 14 times per day. On Solana, the rotation is more stable, around once. USDT moves faster on BNB and Tron, where it’s the main channel for cross-border payments.

What do these coins really do? The data breaks down into very specific categories: $5.9 trillion in DEX liquidity operations, $1.3 trillion in flash loans, $599 billion in CEX-chain flows, and $1.06 trillion in issuance operations. 90% of the volume went through identified categories — it’s not just random movement.

What’s interesting is that the dataset also tracks over 200 stablecoins in more than 20 fiat currencies. We have euros (17 tokens, 990 million in supply), Brazilian real (141 million), yen, and even stablecoins in Nigerian naira, Kenyan shilling, and South African rand. The total volume of these local currencies is just $1.2 billion, but there are already 59 tokens across six continents. The infrastructure for stablecoins in local currencies is being built, opening real opportunities for conversion like naira to USDT in emerging markets.

What makes this dataset unique is the granularity. Each transfer is classified into one of nine activity categories, each balance segmented by holder type. This transforms noisy blockchain logs into structured data — revealing mechanism shifts, cross-chain flows, concentration risks, and real participation patterns.

This is exactly the depth institutions, researchers, and platforms like Gate need to understand where capital is truly moving in the stablecoin universe.