Recently, I noticed a quite interesting stablecoin dataset from Dune and Steakhouse Financial. This data is very comprehensive, tracking everything from holder composition to fund flows and velocity across various blockchains. Much more detailed than just the supply figures we see everywhere.

So the situation is like this: in January 2026, the supply of the top 15 stablecoins reached $304 billion, up 49% year-over-year. USDT and USDC still dominate with 89% market share. But what's interesting is the growth in challenger coins - USDS grew 376%, PYUSD increased 753%, and RLUSD skyrocketed 1803%. So the market is becoming more diverse, although the duopoly remains strong.

If we look at who holds these stablecoins, there are actually 172 million unique addresses holding at least one of the top 15 stablecoins. But the distribution varies greatly depending on the token. USDT and USDC have broad distribution - the top 10 holders only control 23-26%. Meanwhile, USDS, USDF, and USD0 are much more concentrated, with the top 10 holders controlling 60-99% of the supply. This is important to note because it affects liquidity depth and risk.

Now, the most eye-opening part is transaction volume. In January, stablecoin transaction volume reached $10.3 trillion - more than double January 2025. But the distribution is interesting: Base has only $4.4 billion in supply but leads with $5.9 trillion in transaction volume. USDC dominates with $8.3 trillion in volume, nearly 5x USDT despite having a smaller supply. This indicates USDC has a much higher velocity.

Breaking down where this stablecoin flow goes, it turns out 90% flows into specific activity categories. DEX liquidity provision and withdrawal are the single largest use case with $5.9 trillion. Flash loans reach $1.3 trillion. CEX inflow-outflow 1928374656574839.25T billion. So stablecoins primarily serve as trading infrastructure and liquidity backbone in on-chain markets.

The velocity metric also reveals interesting insights. USDC has a daily turnover rate of up to 14x on Base, driven by high-frequency DeFi trading. Meanwhile, USDT on Ethereum is only 0.2x - with over 1928374656574839.25T billion in supply mostly idle. This isn’t a problem, but a reflection of different use cases. USDe and USDS are designed as yield-bearing stablecoins, so naturally they have lower velocity.

Another aspect to watch is currency diversification. Beyond dollar stablecoins, this dataset tracks over 200 stablecoins representing 20+ currencies. There are euro stablecoins $599 $100 million(, Brazilian real $990 ) million(, Japanese yen, and emerging markets like Nigerian naira, Kenyan shilling, South African rand, Turkish lira, Indonesian rupiah. Total non-dollar stablecoin supply is only $1.2 billion, but there are already 59 tokens spread across six continents. This shows infrastructure for local currency stablecoins is developing.

This data is important because it provides much deeper visibility into the stablecoin ecosystem beyond just supply figures. We can see who holds, what their velocity is, and where the flows are actually going. For institutions and regulators starting to enter this space, this is the insight they need to understand real market dynamics. Interested in a deeper dive into this data on Gate or other platforms that provide detailed on-chain analytics.