Dive Brief:
- The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s lead payments specialist, Franklin Noll, estimated the total market capitalization for stablecoins stood at $300.5 billion as of Nov. 14, 2025, with nearly half (48.8%) used “as a trading asset,” according to a new report. That includes stablecoins that are used for cryptocurrency exchanges’ liquidity, as collateral for lending and as a store of value between trades.
- Stablecoins are used for fund transfers in about a third of cases (29.3%), including for corporate treasury money movement on blockchain technology, according to the Fed analysis of crypto exchange data in the report released Friday.
- Aside from stablecoins used for the trading function, Noll estimates less than one percent (0.7%) are used for payments, such as peer-to-peer transfers, cross-border remittances, business-to-business payments, such as supplier compensation, and business-to-consumer payments, like payroll disbursements.
Dive Insight:
The Fed report relied partly on data from the crypto research firm DeFiLlama, which tracks digital currencies, including those it considers to be the biggest four by circulation, including USDT (Tether), USDC (Circle), USDE (Ethena), and USDS (Sky Dollar). Those four cryptocurrencies account for about 90% of all stablecoins and thereby act as a “good proxy for the entire stablecoin market,” the report said.
Aside from the half of stablecoins used for trading-related purposes, the sliver devoted to payments, and the nearly one-third directed to non-payments fund transfers, about one-fifth (21.2%) sit idle.
With regard to the payments function, Noll suggested that small percentage will likely expand in light of President Donald Trump signing the Genius Act last year, which allows for a regulatory structure for stablecoins.
“Payments defined in the traditional sense of B2B, P2P, and so on, have yet to live up to the promise of explosive growth proclaimed by many since the passage of the GENIUS act in July 2025,” the report said. “However, the use of stablecoins in payments is undoubtedly growing.”
Despite the insights provided in the report, the Kansas City Fed researcher acknowledged that the stablecoin market remains hard to track. This challenge might explain why other estimates of the stablecoin industry may vary depending on whom you ask.
Another analysis from S&P Global Market Intelligence found that approximately $269 billion in stablecoins were in circulation in 2025, but the firm projects that the stablecoin market will reach $434 billion by 2028. Furthermore, only 12% of American consumers are aware of stablecoins, S&P said.
In a Macquarie Group report released in March, the total value for stablecoin transactions reached $1.78 trillion in February, up from $668 billion a year prior. The report attributed the spike, in part, to payment companies like PayPal Holdings, Mastercard and Fiserv dipping their toe into the digital asset pool.
Some payment players are taking their stablecoin experiments beyond the U.S. Last month, PayPal introduced its stablecoin in 68 countries, including Costa Rica, Honduras, Peru, Singapore and Greenland. The peer-to-peer payment giant previously offered its stablecoin on its app to U.S. and U.K. customers only.
Like the Kansas City Fed, others are paying closer attention to the use case for stablecoins. During a webinar hosted by Flagship Advisory Partners and a podcast episode published by the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, payment industry insiders pointed to stablecoin use for remittances, airline payments and retail marketplace payments as novel stablecoin use cases.
