Overview
- Cross-border stablecoin transfers hit record highs in 2025 and surpassed Bitcoin and Ethereum, with Asia leading volumes and the fastest growth in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East.
- Dollar-pegged stablecoins now exceed $300 billion in circulation and logged more than $23 trillion in trading volume in 2024, signaling a shift from exchange utility to global payment rails.
- Tether remains the dominant issuer with roughly $190 billion USDT outstanding, and major issuers back tokens with T-bills and repos, becoming meaningful marginal buyers in short-term U.S. debt.
- The IMF highlights concentration risk and the lack of formal liquidity backstops, and Standard Chartered estimates emerging-market banks could face up to $1 trillion in deposit outflows.
- Regulation remains fragmented as the U.S. GENIUS Act creates a scalable onshore regime, and Citi has raised its 2030 issuance forecast to $1.9 trillion in its base case and $4 trillion in a bull case.