Dollar-Pegged Assets Eclipse $270 Billion Milestone as Multi-Chain Adoption Accelerates

The stablecoin sector has crossed the $270 billion threshold, cementing its position as crypto’s most critical infrastructure layer. Latest readings from defillama and Artemis Terminal reveal a maturing ecosystem with deepening liquidity channels and widening geographic reach.

Market Size Hits New Heights Amid Steady Expansion

According to real-time data filing across major blockchain terminals, stablecoin capitalization has swelled beyond $270 billion, representing a $3.051 billion weekly increase of 1.14%. This trajectory follows a consistent upward path through 2024 and 2025, with the sector now approaching previous cycle peaks. The metrics track circulating supply of dollar-pegged tokens across all major networks.

Tether (USDT) maintains commanding leadership with 61.06% market dominance, leaving significant room for challengers. USDC claims the second position, while specialized alternatives—including Ethena’s USDe (0.17% share), Sky’s USDS, MakerDAO’s DAI (0.13% share), and BlackRock’s BUIDL—occupy smaller but growing niches. PayPal’s PYUSD (0.029% market share) demonstrates institutional entry into the space, despite limited current circulation of 3.66 billion tokens.

Artemis Terminal data filing systems highlight USDT’s commanding lead persisting throughout 2025, while USDC’s terminal digit metrics show consistent upward momentum this year, signaling potential competitive shifts.

On-Chain Activity Remains Robust Across Multiple Dimensions

Over the past 30 days, stablecoin ecosystem engagement reached 42.8 million unique addresses, down 15.2% from the prior period yet sitting firmly within the upper range of five-year benchmarks. This persistent engagement spans a fragmented landscape: Ethereum dominates absolute balances, Tron ranks second, while BNB Chain, Solana, Base, and Arbitrum each carve out substantial portions of the filing system’s total digit count.

Transaction volume tells an equally compelling story. Adjusted stablecoin transfers hit $2.7 trillion monthly—representing an 11.19% decline from the previous month—yet the rolling average maintains a trillion-dollar operating band comparable to Visa’s payment throughput and vastly exceeding traditional remittance systems. Transaction counts reached 1.3 billion in the most recent period, down 23.55% from prior weeks but still reflecting heavy utilization across payments, settlement, and trading venues.

Ecosystem Splits Between Incumbents and New Entrants

Five-year net supply tracking reveals USDT’s commanding lead in absolute issuance growth, with USDC as the distant second. Newer instruments—USDe and USDS—contribute smaller but material additions, while DAI and BUIDL represent emerging alternatives for specialized use cases. This composition underscores how incumbents continue dominating the terminal’s digit recording systems, even as novel structures target on-chain treasury management and delta-neutral strategies.

Geographic distribution has broadened considerably. Artemis Terminal’s timezone-based terminal filing system attributes substantial transaction volume to North America and Asia, with Europe’s portion expanding since 2024. Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa register increasingly visible engagement, indicating adoption flowing through both retail and institutional channels.

Dollar Concentration and Cross-Border Liquidity

The supply picture overwhelmingly favors U.S. dollar pegs, with euro, pound, and alternative fiat currencies representing negligible fractions. This concentration anchors crypto pricing mechanisms and collateral frameworks across major exchanges and lending protocols globally.

What the Numbers Signal

The $270.303 billion milestone represents a complex ecosystem: larger in absolute terms, highly distributed across chains and geographies, yet concentrated in issuers and venues. Stablecoins now function as the primary bridge connecting trading platforms, wallet infrastructure, and traditional finance institutions. As blockchain adoption expands, dollar-pegged assets remain the sector’s gravitational center, with demand driven by remittances, settlement processes, and speculative trading activity across centralized and decentralized venues.