Stablecoin Market Worth $300 Billion: Revealing Who Holds It, How It Flows, and How Quickly It Circulates

Stablecoins have gone beyond impressive circulation figures. As major institutions like Meta, PayPal, and Ripple accelerate blockchain-based payment integrations, regulators and investors are no longer asking “how many stablecoins are in circulation,” but rather “who holds these assets, how are they used, and how quickly do they circulate?” Dune Analytics, in partnership with Steakhouse Finance, has released a comprehensive dataset providing in-depth answers to these questions, analyzing the 15 largest stablecoins across the EVM ecosystem, Solana, and Tron. The results reveal a much more complex market dynamic than simply looking at supply numbers.

Supply Landscape: USDT and USDC Remain Dominant with 89% Control

By January 2026, the fully diluted supply of the top 15 stablecoins reached $304 billion, up 49% year-over-year. However, distribution remains highly concentrated: Tether’s USDT leads with $197 billion, followed by Circle’s USDC at $73 billion (up to $78.9 billion as of March 2026). These two tokens together control 89% of the global stablecoin market share.

From a blockchain perspective, the distribution pattern remains consistent with previous years. Ethereum hosts $176 billion (58% of total), Tron $84 billion (28%), Solana $15 billion (5%), and BNB Chain $13 billion (4%). This stability indicates that although stablecoin supply continues to grow, cross-chain allocation has reached a balance point.

However, behind the market dominance of these two leaders, challengers emerged in 2025 and early 2026. USDS from Sky Ecosystem and MakerDAO surged spectacularly by 376%, reaching $6.3 billion. PayPal USD (PYUSD) increased by 753% to $2.8 billion, then continued growing to $4.1 billion by March 2026. Ripple’s RLUSD experienced the most dramatic jump, up 1,803%, from $58 million to $1.1 billion. Meanwhile, USD1 (World Liberty Financial USD) exploded from zero to $5.1 billion, now settled at $2.15 billion according to the latest data.

Growth has not been uniform across all players. USD0 contracted by 66%, while USDe from Ethena, despite nearly tripling from its October 2025 peak, ended the year with moderate growth of 23%. These dynamics demonstrate that the stablecoin market is undergoing consolidation and differentiation phases.

Who Really Holds These Billions in Stablecoins?

Most stablecoin datasets only show circulation figures. But by combining address labels to track balances at the wallet level, Dune’s dataset offers rare transparency: revealing the actual holders.

On EVM and Solana, centralized exchanges (CEXs) emerge as the largest identifiable holder category, holding $80 billion in stablecoins, a significant increase from $58 billion a year earlier. The primary stablecoin holders remain trading and settlement infrastructure on exchange platforms. Whale wallets (large holders) control $39 billion. DeFi protocols offering yield returns—almost doubling—reach $9.3 billion, reflecting expanding blockchain-based income strategies. The most surprising holders are the issuer addresses themselves—cash reserves and smart contracts for minting and burning—jumping 4.6 times from $2.2 billion to $10.2 billion, precisely indicating how much new supply enters the market each month.

An interesting statistic: only 23% of total circulating stablecoins are held in addresses that are fully unknown. This is an exceptionally high recognition rate for blockchain data, providing clarity on where the real risks lie within the stablecoin ecosystem.

172 Million Holders, but Worrying Concentration

As of February 2026, there are 172 million unique addresses holding at least one of these 15 stablecoins. USDT has 136 million addresses, USDC 36 million, and DAI (up to $4.33 billion) 4.7 million. These three tokens show truly dispersed distribution: the top ten wallets hold only 23-26% of their circulation, with the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI—standard measure of concentration, where 0 is full dispersion and 1.0 is a single holder) below 0.03.

All other stablecoins tell a very different story. The top ten wallets hold 60-99% of their circulation. USDS, despite having $6.9 billion in circulation, is 90% concentrated in 10 wallets (HHI 0.48). USDF is even more concentrated, with 99% in the top 10 wallets (HHI 0.54). The most extreme case is USD0: the top ten wallets control 99%, with an HHI of 0.84, indicating that even among the largest holders, the circulation is almost dominated by one or two wallets.

This level of concentration does not always imply a problem. Some new tokens have just launched, and others are intentionally designed for institutional investors. But it does mean their circulation data must be interpreted very differently from USDT or USDC. High concentration carries risks of depegging, limits liquidity depth, and determines whether “circulation” truly reflects organic demand or just actions by a few large participants.

Stablecoin Transactions Reach $10.3 Trillion: Volume Far Exceeds Circulation

In January 2026, stablecoin transaction volume across EVM, Solana, and Tron hit $10.3 trillion—more than double that of January 2025. But cross-chain distribution is highly surprising and markedly different from supply figures.

Base leads with $5.9 trillion in transaction volume, despite only $4.4 million in stablecoin circulation. Ethereum records $2.4 trillion, Tron $682 billion, Solana $544 billion, and BNB Chain $406 billion. These extreme differences reveal a fundamental reality: blockchains with strong DeFi infrastructure generate transaction volumes far exceeding the available stablecoin supply.

From a token perspective, USDC dominates with $8.3 trillion in transaction volume—almost five times USDT’s $1.7 trillion—even though USDC’s circulation is 2.7 times smaller. This indicates USDC circulates much faster and is used more frequently in high-frequency DeFi activities. DAI records $138 billion, USDS $920 billion, and USD1 $430 billion—volumes that far surpass their circulation proportions.

It’s important to note that these figures are neutral and not filtered by “real economic activity.” The data may include arbitrage flows, bot activity, internal transfers, and automated behaviors. This flexibility allows users to apply their own filters as needed for analysis.

Actual Usage: DeFi Infrastructure, Not Just Payments

This is where Dune’s dataset shines brightest. Each transaction is not only labeled as “volume” but classified according to actual on-chain activity. The difference between “knowing $10 trillion was transferred” and “understanding why it was transferred” is the difference between raw data and real insight.

Market Infrastructure (DEXs and Liquidity) Providing DEX liquidity and withdrawing from liquidity pools dominate with $5.9 trillion—by far the largest single activity. This clearly shows stablecoins as the backbone of decentralized trading infrastructure. Direct DEX swaps account for $376 billion. Together, these categories reveal that stablecoins primarily serve as trading collateral and liquidity backing, not mainly as consumer payment methods.

Leverage and Capital Efficiency Flash loans (borrowing and repaying within a single transaction) reach $1.3 billion, automating arbitrage cycles. Common lending activities—providing, borrowing, repaying, withdrawing—total $137 billion, indicating strong demand for short-term capital efficiency and structured on-chain credit.

Access Channels (CEXs and Cross-Chain Transfers) CEX flows—deposits ($224 billion), withdrawals ($224 billion), internal transfers ($151 billion)—total $599 billion. Bridge activity—cross-chain deposits and withdrawals—reaches $28 billion. These flows demonstrate stablecoins as bridges between centralized exchanges and blockchain ecosystems.

Issuer Operations (Minting and Burning) Issuer activities—minting ($280 billion), burning ($200 billion), peg rebalancing ($230 billion), and other issuance—total $1.06 trillion. Nearly five times the $420 billion a year earlier, this shows massive scaling in stablecoin supply management.

Yield Protocols Yield protocol events—$2.7 billion—are smaller but structurally significant, closely tied to on-chain asset management strategies.

Overall, 90% of all transactions can be traced to identified activity categories, providing granular insights into stablecoin flows across blockchain infrastructure layers.

Circulation Velocity: Same Token, Different Worlds

Daily circulation velocity (total transactions divided by supply) may be the least utilized metric in stablecoin analysis. It reveals how actively stablecoins are used as exchange tools versus being held statically.

USDC circulates fastest on Layer 2 and Solana. On Base, median daily turnover reaches an extraordinary 14x—driven by high-frequency DeFi activity. On Solana and Polygon, around 1x per day. Even on Ethereum, USDC’s velocity is 0.9x, meaning nearly all supply circulates daily.

USDT circulates fastest on BNB Chain and Tron. On BNB, USDT’s daily turnover is 1.4x, reflecting active trading. On Tron, slower at 0.3x but remarkably stable day-to-day, consistent with its role as a dominant cross-border payment channel. Conversely, on Ethereum, USDT’s velocity is only 0.2x—over $100 billion in largely idle supply.

USDe and USDS show slow circulation velocity, which is a design feature, not a flaw. USDe’s daily turnover on Ethereum is just 0.09x, USDS 0.5x. Both are designed as yield-bearing stablecoins: USDe is usually staked as sUSDe to capture returns from Ethena’s delta-neutral strategy, while USDS is stored in Sky Savings Rate. Most of their supply remains in smart contract savings, lending protocols like Aave, or yield cycles. Here, slow velocity is a feature, not a bug.

The same token on different blockchains exhibits very different usage patterns. PYUSD shows a daily turnover of 0.6x on Solana—more than four times faster than 0.1x on Ethereum. The blockchain ecosystem determines how tokens are used, not the tokens themselves.

Beyond the Dollar: Developing Local Currency Infrastructure

While the analysis focuses on 15 dollar-pegged stablecoins, the full dataset includes over 200 stablecoins representing more than 20 currencies: euro (17 tokens, $990 million market), Brazilian real ($141 million), Japanese yen ($13 million), as well as tokens in NGN (Nigerian naira), KES (Kenyan shilling), ZAR (South African rand), TRY (Turkish lira), IDR (Indonesian rupiah), SGD (Singapore dollar), and others.

Total non-dollar stablecoin circulation is currently only $1.2 billion, but 59 tokens have already launched across six continents, representing 30% of the total tokens in the dataset. Infrastructure for local currency stablecoins is being built across the global blockchain landscape, with data available and ready for analysis.

The Tip of the Iceberg: Why This Matters for the Future

All insights in this analysis stem from just a few queries on a single dataset. We have only examined 15 stablecoins and some key indicators, while the full dataset covers nearly 200 stablecoins across 30 blockchains. Dune’s unique classification layer—mapping each transaction to its on-chain trigger and categorizing it into one of nine activity types using a deterministic framework—transforms noisy blockchain logs into structured, comparable data. Each balance is segmented by holder type with a standardized cross-chain classification system.

This combination turns raw blockchain data into structured insights—revealing shifts in mechanisms, capital flows between ecosystems, concentration risks, and adoption patterns. This precision can answer questions we haven’t even asked yet: Which wallets accumulate new stablecoins before listings? How do holder concentrations change days before unlock events? What are cross-chain bridge flow patterns for euro stablecoins? Do minting operations correlate with market pressures?

This dataset is designed to support institutional analysis, research reports, risk modeling frameworks, compliance monitoring flows, and executive dashboards. The depth is there. Now it’s time to dig deeper.