I just saw interesting data from Dune about stablecoins that piqued my curiosity. All this time, we've often heard that the stablecoin supply has surpassed 300 billion dollars, but how well do we really understand this asset? Who holds it, how is it distributed, and most importantly—what are stablecoins actually used for?

Looking at the latest supply landscape (data April 2026), the total supply of the top 15 stablecoins on EVM, Solana, and Tron reaches around 304 billion dollars. USDT remains the king with a supply of about 189 billion dollars, followed by USDC at 77 billion dollars. These two tokens control 89% of the total stablecoin market. But what's interesting is that in 2025, the challengers emerged. USDS from Sky Ecosystem/MakerDAO exploded by 376%, PYUSD from PayPal rose by 753%, and RLUSD from Ripple even jumped 1,803% from a very small initial position. This indicates that the stablecoin market is starting to diversify.

From the blockchain side, Ethereum still dominates with 176 billion dollars (58% of the total), Tron accounts for 84 billion, Solana 15 billion, and BNB Chain 13 billion. This distribution has remained relatively stable over the past year.

Now, deeper—who actually holds these stablecoins? Dune data shows that CEX (centralized exchanges) are the largest holders with 80 billion dollars, up from 58 billion a year ago. Whale wallets hold 39 billion, while yield farming protocols hold 9.3 billion (almost double). Interestingly, issuer addresses (issuer addresses) increased 4.6 times to 10.2 billion dollars, directly reflecting the new supply entering the market.

There are 172 million unique addresses holding at least one of these 15 stablecoins. USDT is held by 136 million addresses, USDC by 36 million. But here’s a plot twist—ownership concentration varies greatly depending on the token. For USDT and USDC, the top 10 wallets hold only 23-26% of the supply with an HHI index below 0.03 (highly distributed). But for challenger stablecoins like USDS, the top 10 wallets hold 90% of the supply (HHI 0.48), and USD0 is the most extreme with the top 10 wallets holding 99% (HHI 0.84). This is important because it shows that supply data interpretation must differ for each token.

Looking at transaction data, January 2026 shows stablecoin transfer volume reaching 10.3 trillion dollars—more than double the amount from a year earlier. But the distribution of this volume is very different from the supply distribution. For example, the base chain’s transaction volume is 5.9 trillion dollars, even though its supply is only 4.4 billion. Ethereum’s volume is 2.4 trillion, Tron 682 billion, Solana 544 billion.

Token-wise, USDC dominates with a volume of 8.3 trillion dollars—almost five times USDT’s volume despite its supply being 2.7 times smaller. This indicates that USDC circulates much faster and is actively used.

The most interesting part is the breakdown of stablecoin usage. From Dune data, 5.9 trillion dollars are used for DEX liquidity provision—this is the largest use case. It means stablecoins primarily serve as infrastructure for on-chain market making. Swap activity on DEXs amounts to 376 billion dollars. Flash loans reach 1.3 trillion (arbitrage and liquidation cycles). Lending activity totals 137 billion. CEX flows (deposits, withdrawals, internal transfers) total 599 billion. Cross-chain bridge flows are 28 billion. Issuer operations (minting, burning, rebalancing) nearly five times higher at 106 billion.

Regarding velocity (circulation speed), USDC is the fastest on L2 and Solana—in Base, it even reaches 14x daily turnover, a crazy figure considering its relatively small supply. USDT is most active on BNB and Tron with daily turnovers of 1.4x and 0.3x respectively. But on Ethereum, USDT’s velocity is only 0.2x—large supply but mostly inactive. USDe and USDS have lower velocity because they are designed as yield-bearing stablecoins, with most of their supply locked in yield contracts or lending protocols.

What’s often overlooked is that the underlying blockchain is more important than the token itself. For example, PYUSD on Solana has a daily turnover of 0.6x, four times faster than on Ethereum (0.1x). The same token, but usage patterns are completely different depending on the ecosystem.

Beyond the dollar, Dune data also tracks over 200 stablecoins representing more than 20 fiat currencies. Euro stablecoins number 17 tokens with a supply of 990 million dollars, Brazilian real 141 million, Japanese yen 13 million. There are also stablecoins valued in Nigerian naira, Kenyan shilling, South African rand, Turkish lira, Indonesian rupiah, and Singapore dollar. The total supply of non-USD stablecoins remains small (1.2 billion), but 59 tokens are already live across six continents—almost 30% of all tokens in the dataset. Infrastructure for local fiat stablecoins is being built, which is crucial for global financial inclusion, especially in emerging markets that are not fully banked.

This Dune data is actually just the tip of the iceberg. Their complete dataset tracks nearly 200 stablecoins across more than 30 blockchains, with sophisticated classification for each transaction. Every transfer is mapped to its on-chain trigger and classified into one of nine activity categories. Each balance is segmented by holder type using a standard classification applied across all chains.

This raises questions we haven't asked before: which wallets are starting to accumulate new stablecoins before launch on exchanges? How does holder concentration change in the days leading up to a de-peg event? What are the flow patterns for stablecoins valued in local currencies? How closely do issuer minting/burning patterns correlate with market pressures?

This data is designed to support institutional-level analysis, research publications, risk modeling frameworks, and compliance monitoring. The depth is here—it's just a matter of digging deeper.