Just saw Dune's analysis on stablecoins that was quite eye-opening. Everyone always focuses on the supply numbers—more than $300 billion— but rarely digs deep into what’s behind those numbers. Who actually holds these coins? How centralized is it? What are they really used for?

Latest data shows USDT still leads with $189.76 billion in circulation, followed by USDC with $77.76 billion. Both dominate about 89% of the market. But what's interesting is that 2025 is the year of challengers. USDS grew 376% to $11.49 billion, PayPal’s PYUSD surged 753% to $3.44 billion, and USDG expanded 52 times. Each of these tokens has a different story.

But here’s the most crucial part—172 million unique addresses hold these stablecoins as of February 2026. Sounds like a lot? Yeah, but the concentration is extremely high. USDT and USDC have broad distribution, with the top 10 wallets holding only 23-26% of the supply. Meanwhile, others? USDS with $11.49 billion, 90% stored in 10 wallets. USDF is even more extreme—99% in the top 10 wallets. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but it definitely changes how we interpret their supply figures.

Monthly transactions also surged dramatically. January 2026 hit $10.3 trillion—double January 2025. The leading base chain with $5.9 trillion, even though its supply is only $4.4 billion. USDC is actually more actively transferred—$8.3 trillion in transactions, nearly five times USDT. But velocity varies across chains. On Base, USDC rotates 14 times a day. On Ethereum, only 0.9 times. USDT on Tron rotates 0.3 times but is super stable, suitable for cross-border payments.

What’s most interesting is the breakdown of actual activity. Turns out, $5.9 trillion of the $10.3 trillion is for DEX liquidity and trading. Flash loans amount to $1.3 billion. Lending activities total $137 billion. CEX deposit-withdrawals reach $599 billion. Issuer operations—minting, burning, rebalancing—reach $1.06 trillion, five times higher than a year ago. This isn’t just “volume,” but a window into the mechanical flow of the stablecoin ecosystem.

It’s also interesting to look beyond USD. There are over 200 stablecoins tracking 20+ currencies—Euro (17 tokens), Brazilian real, Japanese yen, Indonesian rupiah, ringgit, rupiah, and others. Total non-USD stablecoin supply remains small at $1.2 billion, but 59 tokens are already deployed across six continents. Infrastructure for local currency stablecoins is being built on blockchains, and data for tracking them is already available.

This data is very deep—almost 200 stablecoins across 30 blockchains with sophisticated transaction classification. Each transfer is mapped to its on-chain trigger and classified into nine activity categories. Each balance is broken down by holder type. This combination transforms blockchain logs into structured, comparable data. It can answer questions we haven’t even asked yet—concentration risk, capital flows between chains, issuance and redemption patterns.

If you’re interested in exploring this data further, you can check out the Dune dataset that collaborates with SteakhouseFi. This is the level of insight usually only available in institutional research. Personally, if you want to track stablecoin movements and market flows, Gate has solid tools to monitor real-time data and trading patterns.