Where Are Stablecoins Flowing? In-Depth Research on Liquidity and Fund Flows $300 Billion

Simple questions but often overlooked: when we talk about stablecoins worth over $300 billion circulating on the blockchain, do we really understand where that money flows? Who holds it? How quickly do coins change hands? And most importantly—are they truly used for cross-border payments, or just sitting idle in wallets? Recent research from Dune Analytics, developed together with SteakhouseFi, reveals a much more complex story than just circulation numbers. This data is especially important for understanding stablecoin liquidity in an international context, including how conversions like $430 USD to IDR reflect market needs for stable and efficient payment infrastructure.

Supply Landscape: Open Dominance, Growing Challenges

By January 2026, the top 15 stablecoins across the EVM, Solana, and Tron networks had a total circulation of $304 billion, up 49% year-over-year. However, market structure remains sharply segmented.

Tether’s USDT maintains the top position with $197 billion (64% of the top 15), followed by Circle’s USDC with $73 billion (24%). These two giants control 89% of the market share, but latest data from March 2026 shows USDC has grown to $78.9 billion with 6.4 million unique holders. On the blockchain level, Ethereum remains the center of gravity with 58% ($176 billion), Tron follows with 28% ($84 billion), Solana 5% ($15 billion), and BNB Chain 4% ($13 billion).

Cross-chain distribution has barely changed over the past year, but what’s interesting is the explosion of competitors below USDT-USDC. USDS (MakerDAO/Sky) jumped 376% to $6.3 billion. PYUSD from PayPal surged 753% to $2.8 billion—now recorded at $4.1 billion in March 2026. RLUSD from Ripple increased dramatically from $58 million to $1.1 billion (+1,803%). USDG grew 52 times. USD1 went from zero to $5.1 billion, now at $2.15 billion. But not all new players follow the positive momentum: USD0 dropped 66%, while USDe from Ethena, after tripling from its October peak, ended the year with modest growth of 23%.

Expansion in competitor zones indicates increasing market fragmentation, reflecting efforts by various institutions to capture a share of the global payment infrastructure—including local market needs for liquidity in cross-border transactions.

Who Really Holds These Stablecoins?

Circulation data alone isn’t enough to tell the story. Dune has integrated address labels to track balances at the individual wallet level, providing much deeper insights into ownership concentration.

On EVM and Solana, centralized exchanges (CEXs) emerge as the largest holder category with $80 billion in stablecoins, up from $58 billion a year ago. This is no coincidence—stablecoins remain the backbone of trading and settlement infrastructure on exchanges. Whale wallets control $39 billion. Yield-bearing protocols have exploded to $9.3 billion, reflecting a trend where users not only hold stablecoins but generate returns from them. Importantly, issuer addresses—including cash reserves and mint/burn contracts—have jumped 4.6 times from $2.2 billion to $10.2 billion, indicating a rapid injection of new supply into the market.

The quality of label data is impressive: only 23% of circulation is stored in addresses that are fully unknown. This is an extremely high recognition rate for on-chain data, crucial for anyone wanting to understand where the real risks lie within the stablecoin ecosystem.

172 Million Users, but Extreme Concentration in the Majority

As of February 2026, there are 172 million unique addresses holding at least one of these 15 stablecoins. USDT alone has 136 million addresses, USDC 36 million, DAI 4.7 million.

These three tokens show truly broad distribution: the top 10 wallets hold only 23-26% of circulation, with Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) below 0.03—indicating real decentralization.

The story changes drastically for other competitors. For USDS, despite a circulation of $6.3 billion, 90% is concentrated in 10 wallets (HHI 0.48). USDF is even more extreme: the top 10 control 99% (HHI 0.54). USD0 is the worst case: 99% in 10 wallets with an HHI of 0.84—meaning even among top holders, one or two wallets dominate nearly the entire supply.

This isn’t a fundamental flaw. Many new tokens, some intentionally designed for institutional investors, exhibit this pattern. But it’s important to understand: “$5 billion circulation” for USD1 means very different things when 96.21% is concentrated in 10 wallets compared to USDT where the top 10 hold only 25%. Concentration drives depegging risk, liquidity depth, and distinguishes between organic demand and actions by a few large players.

Fund Flows Reach $10.3 Trillion: Different Stories on Each Chain

By January 2026, stablecoin transaction volume across EVM, Solana, and Tron hit an astonishing $10.3 trillion—more than double January 2025.

But chain-level details tell very different stories from circulation figures. Base leads with $5.9 trillion in transfers despite only $4.4 billion in circulation. Ethereum handles $2.4 trillion. Tron $682 billion. Solana $544 billion. BNB Chain $406 billion. This shows that transaction activity doesn’t always correlate with large supply.

At the token level, USDC dominates with $8.3 trillion in volume—almost five times USDT’s $1.7 trillion—despite its circulation being 2.7 times smaller. USDC’s velocity and rotation frequency are much faster. DAI records $138 billion in transactions, USDS $920 billion, USD1 $430 billion. USDe and USDS are intriguing: their transaction volumes are relatively small, but this is by design, not a bug—they are optimized as yield-bearing assets.

It’s important to note: this data is intentionally neutral. The total volume may include arbitrage activity, bot activity, and other automated behaviors. The dataset offers users the flexibility to apply their own filters—whether to exclude bot volume or identify pure organic flows.

What Are Stablecoins Actually Used For?

This is where Dune’s dataset precision shines. Transfers are not just labeled as “trading volume” in the abstract but classified into specific on-chain activity categories.

Market Infrastructure (DEX and Liquidity): $5.9 trillion is the largest category—providing liquidity to DEXs and withdrawals from liquidity pools. This reflects stablecoins’ role as core assets in on-chain markets. Direct DEX swaps contribute another $376 billion. Together, they show stablecoins mainly serve as collateral assets and liquidity infrastructure—most volume driven by incentives like liquidity mining, not pure trading demand.

Leverage and Capital Efficiency: Flash loans (borrow and repay within a single transaction) reach $1.3 billion, automating arbitrage cycles. Conventional lending activity—providing, borrowing, repaying, withdrawing—total $137 billion, indicating structured credit and short-term capital efficiency on-chain.

Access Channels: CEX flows—deposits ($224 billion), withdrawals ($224 billion), internal transfers ($151 billion)—total $599 billion. Cross-chain bridge fills and drains reach $28 billion. This data shows stablecoins function as bridges between centralized exchanges and cross-chain settlement—an important aspect in the context of global conversions like $430 USD to IDR, reflecting international liquidity needs.

Issuer Operations: Minting ($280 billion), burning ($200 billion), collateral rebalancing ($230 billion), and other operations total $1.06 trillion—almost five times the record $420 billion from a year ago. This indicates exponential growth in circulation management.

Yield Protocols: Yield farming-related events reach $2.7 billion. A smaller but structurally important segment for on-chain asset management.

Overall, 90% of transaction flows can be mapped to known activity categories—providing visibility into stablecoin movements across all layers of technology.

Circulation Speed: Same Token, Different Worlds

Daily circulation speed (total transfer volume divided by circulation) is one of the most overlooked yet most informative indicators of stablecoins. It distinguishes between tokens actively participating in the economy versus those just sitting idle.

Among top tokens, USDC and USDT show starkly different patterns. USDC rotates fastest on L2 and Solana. On Base, USDC reaches a median daily rotation of 14 times—a remarkable figure driven by high-frequency DeFi activity. On Solana and Polygon, PYUSD reaches about 0.6 times (four times faster than Ethereum’s 0.1). Blockchain distribution has a greater influence than the token itself on usage patterns.

USDT rotates fastest on BNB and Tron. On BNB Chain, USDT’s rotation hits 1.4 times, reflecting intense trading activity. On Tron, it’s lower at 0.3 times but stable—consistent with its role as a dominant cross-border payment channel. On Ethereum, USDT’s rotation is only 0.2 times—over $100 billion in circulation, most of it just sitting idle.

USDe and USDS show deliberately slow speeds. USDe on Ethereum is only 0.09 times, USDS 0.5 times—both yield-bearing with most supply locked in savings contracts, lending protocols like Aave, or structured yield cycles. Low speed here isn’t a weakness but a feature: these assets are engineered to generate returns, not to rotate.

Beyond the US Dollar: Growing Local Stablecoins

While the above analysis focuses on 15 USD-based stablecoins, the full dataset extends far beyond. Over 200 stablecoins track more than 20 currencies: euro (17 tokens, $990 million), Brazilian real ($141 million), Japanese yen ($13 million), plus tokens in NGN (Nigerian naira), KES (Kenyan shilling), ZAR (South African rand), TRY (Turkish lira), IDR (Indonesian rupiah), SGD (Singapore dollar), and others.

Non-USD stablecoin circulation remains at just $1.2 billion, but there are already 59 types across six continents—almost 30% of the total dataset. Local stablecoin infrastructure is being built on blockchains, and data to track it is available. This is highly relevant for emerging markets like Indonesia, where liquidity for IDR-based payment instruments or conversions like $430 USD to IDR is increasingly important.

Conclusion: The Data Mountain Has Just Begun

All this analysis only scratches the surface of a single dataset. Only 15 stablecoins and a few key metrics are discussed, while the full dataset covers nearly 200 tokens across 30+ blockchains. What makes Dune’s dataset unique is its layered classification—each transaction mapped to on-chain triggers and categorized into one of nine activity types. Each balance is broken down by holder type.

This combination transforms noisy blockchain data into structured, comparable information—revealing shifts in mechanisms, capital flows between places, concentration risks, and participation patterns. This precision can answer questions we haven’t yet asked: Which wallets accumulate new stablecoins before exchange listings? How do holder concentrations change days before unlock events? What are the bridge flow patterns for euro stablecoins? How do mint/burn operations correlate with market pressures?

This dataset is designed to support institutional analysis, research publications, risk modeling frameworks, compliance monitoring, and executive dashboards. The depth is here. It’s time to start exploring.