Stablecoin Market Reaches New Milestone: Key Points from the 2025 Global Industry Development Report

2025 will be a key year in the development of stablecoins. In this year, stablecoins not only set new records in market size and trading activity, but regulatory policies and capital attention also accelerated simultaneously. This asset class, initially serving as a "safe haven" tool within the crypto market, is gradually expanding into the forefront of global payments, cross-border trade, DeFi infrastructure, and even sovereign credit.

A recently published "2025 Global Stablecoin Industry Development Report" points out that stablecoins have become one of the most critical infrastructures connecting traditional finance with the crypto world, and are changing the global financial landscape. The report systematically organizes and analyzes the stablecoin industry from six dimensions: development history, market structure, application scenarios, global regulation, development potential, and potential risks.

US Dollar Stablecoins Dominate the Market

The report found that in the global stablecoin market, US dollar stablecoins hold an absolute advantage, with an issuance of $256.4 billion. In contrast, fiat stablecoins from other countries are still in the early stages, with the second-ranked euro stablecoin only reaching $49 million. Other fiat stablecoins such as the Japanese yen, British pound, South Korean won, and lira range from several hundred thousand to tens of millions of dollars, indicating that non-US dollar fiat stablecoins still have significant growth potential.

As of July 2025, the total market capitalization of global stablecoins has exceeded $250 billion, showing significant growth since the beginning of the year. Among them, the combined market capitalization of USDT and USDC accounts for 86.5% of the market, forming a duopoly in the stablecoin sector. Notably, the total on-chain transfer volume reached $36.3 trillion, surpassing the annual total transaction volume of Visa and Mastercard, becoming a new cornerstone of the global payment network. USDC saw a notable growth rate of 40.9% in 2025, and based on this calculation, USDC is expected to surpass USDT around 2030.

This growth trend is driven by multiple factors:

• Major economies are advancing stablecoin legislation, and the regulatory path is gradually becoming clearer.
• Traditional finance and tech giants are entering the market.
• USDC's parent company successfully went public, sparking the imagination of the capital market regarding stablecoins.
• Users in high inflation areas see it as a hedging tool
• Emerging scenarios such as DeFi, RWA, and payment settlement continue to create actual demand.

From the perspective of on-chain activity, the number of monthly active stablecoin addresses worldwide has exceeded 30 million, and the total number of on-chain holding addresses has surpassed 168 million. The proportion of transactions led by real users has increased from less than 15% in 2023 to the current approximately 22%, with the user structure transitioning from arbitrage bots to enterprises and retail investors.

Stablecoins Entering the Mainstream Financial Sector

Stablecoins are evolving from "trading hedging anchors" to "mainstream digital financial assets." Recently, several tech giants and financial institutions have intensified their efforts in the stablecoin space:

• A stablecoin issuer successfully went public in the US stock market, with a market value nearing 100 billion RMB at one point.
• A well-known payment company has launched its own stablecoin and deployed it on a high-performance public blockchain.
• The world's leading payment technology company has introduced USDC in B2B settlements.
• Chinese e-commerce giant enters the Hong Kong stablecoin market, involving cross-border payments, investment trading, consumption settlement, and other scenarios.
• International retail giants support stablecoins for direct online retail payments.
• The new public chain attracts a large number of stablecoin deployments with low fees and high scalability.

The joint promotion of traditional finance, internet platforms, and the native power of cryptocurrencies has upgraded stablecoins from a crypto-specific settlement tool to a widely available digital payment intermediary, while also raising higher requirements for its regulatory compliance.

Challenges and Risks in Development

Despite the market's strong performance, stablecoins still face numerous structural challenges and controversies:

1. Real usage scale issue: Although the total transfer amount is huge, a significant portion consists of transfers by bots and internal transfers within the exchange. The actual usage scale by end users still needs to be clarified further.

2. Pegging mechanism and transparency issues: Market-leading stablecoins have not yet published complete audit reports, and there has long been controversy surrounding their reserve asset structure and risk exposure.

3. Regulatory policy differences: There are differences and games between regulatory policies in various countries, with some regions not yet allowing the use of stablecoins, while other markets are actively promoting institutional innovation.

It is worth noting that the U.S. "GENIUS Act" has made clear provisions regarding the positioning of stablecoins, the prohibition of algorithmic stablecoins, and reserve requirements, which may profoundly impact the operational logic of existing mainstream stablecoins and the global compliance structure.

Report Highlights: A Six-Dimensional Perspective on Stablecoin Evolution

The report adopts a multi-dimensional analysis approach, comprehensively sorting out the development of stablecoins, covering the following six aspects:

1. Development History: A Review of the Ten-Year Evolution of Stablecoins
2. Market Landscape: Detailed analysis of the dual oligopoly structure, distribution of public chain issuance shares, user trends, and other core data.
3. Application Scenarios: Focus on the key role of stablecoins in cross-border payments, DeFi, retail payments, and RWA.
4. Global Regulation: Overview of Regulatory Dynamics and Legislative Pathways in Major Economies
5. Future Potential: Analyzing the Role of Stablecoins in Global Payment Networks, U.S. Treasury Bond Purchasing Power, and the Competition and Cooperation with CBDCs
6. Risk Warning: Potential challenges including de-pegging, audit transparency, systemic attacks, and money laundering regulatory issues.

The report also specifically pointed out that non-U.S. dollar stablecoins are still in the early stages of development, and there is still significant room for expansion in the future. The market capitalization of euro stablecoins is less than 500 million dollars, while the market capitalizations of stablecoins for currencies such as the yen, pound, and won are mostly in the tens of millions of dollars, indicating further development is needed.