Stablecoin Supply Has Gone Sideways for a Year, Even as Payment Volume Hits Records
Total supply sits near $302 billion, below its May peak, while transaction volume has run well past all of 2025.
Key takeaways
- Total stablecoin supply was about $302.3 billion on Oct. 18, 2026, versus a $322.4 billion peak on May 17.
- Tether's USDT holds roughly 60.7% of supply, with USDC at $72.62 billion.
- Visa-adjusted volume reached $8.82 trillion in H1 2026, against $10.8 trillion for all of 2025.
The dollar-stablecoin market has stopped growing on paper. Total supply was about $302.3 billion in mid-October, according to DefiLlama data cited by DataWallet, inside a $300 billion to $322 billion range it has occupied for a year. Yet usage keeps rising: payment-style volume in the first half of 2026 already reached about 82% of everything moved in 2025.
Supply: a plateau, not a collapse
Stablecoin supply peaked at $322.4 billion on May 17, 2026, per CoinCentral figures that DataWallet cites. By October 18 it had slipped about 6% to $302.3 billion. The pause comes after several years of near-continuous growth and just as the United States is putting a legal framework around the product through the GENIUS Act, whose implementing rules arrived in late October.
Tether remains the dominant issuer. USDT supply stood at $183.39 billion on October 18, about 60.66% of the total. Circle's USDC had $72.62 billion in circulation, a fall of 1.76% over 30 days. That leaves roughly $46 billion, or about 15%, spread among smaller issuers and algorithmic or yield-bearing designs, a figure obtained by subtraction and therefore approximate. USDC has been gaining on USDT earlier in the year, as DexTools reported in June, but October's data shows that trend has paused.
Volume: far busier than supply suggests
Supply measures how many tokens exist; volume measures how often they move. On that second metric, 2026 is a record year. Visa's adjusted stablecoin volume reached $1.79 trillion in June alone and $8.82 trillion across the first half, compared with $10.8 trillion for the whole of 2025. Standard Chartered estimates monthly on-chain transfer value averaged almost $10 trillion in 2026, compared with roughly $4 trillion in the prior year. Allium counted $482 billion in stablecoin payments from January to September 2026, up 45%.
The two issuers play different roles. According to Visa data cited in the report, USDC accounted for about 70% of adjusted first-half volume while USDT, despite its bigger float, accounted for around 25%. Standard Chartered put USDC's velocity near 80 times monthly turnover and USDT's near 7 times. In plain terms, Tether tokens are often held as a store of dollars, particularly outside the US, while USDC tokens circulate quickly through trading, settlement and payment flows.
Why the gap exists
A stablecoin that changes hands 80 times a month needs far less supply to move the same value than one that sits in wallets. As payments use grows and the extra volume comes from fast-moving tokens, supply need not rise much. Crypto trading is another source of demand for dollar tokens, and with bitcoin roughly a third below its October 2025 record, that demand may be soft, though the sources do not break supply down by use.
The regulatory shift adds uncertainty about who will issue next. The GENIUS Act takes effect on January 18, 2027, after the OCC finished its rule on October 21. Banks and fintechs that want to issue dollar tokens will compete for share with Tether and Circle, but the supply data say the incumbents are not yet losing ground to anyone.
Different data providers give slightly different totals, and the figures here come from DefiLlama via DataWallet. CoinGecko's category page and other trackers show numbers between roughly $305 billion and $323 billion at various dates, so readers comparing sources should expect gaps of several billion dollars from definitions and timing alone. The direction is consistent across them: a flat year after steep growth.
What to watch
- The $300 billion floor. A drop below it would suggest redemptions are outpacing mints, a sign of a deeper crypto downturn.
- USDC versus USDT share. USDC's recent 30-day dip is the first sign its streak of gains is stalling.
- New regulated issuers. Applications to issue under GENIUS will show how much bank-backed supply arrives in 2027.
- Payment-only metrics. Allium's payment count and Visa's adjusted volume are better gauges of real use than supply alone.
