At the beginning of 2024, the global stablecoin market exhibited rapid growth, successfully breaking through the $235 billion mark with an increase of 80.7%. In this market wave, USDT and USDC shone as two dazzling stars, maintaining a dominant market position with an 86% contribution to growth. However, a perplexing phenomenon has emerged: the $100 billion incremental capital settled on Ethereum and Tron has not driven the altcoin market to explode in sync as in previous cycles. Relevant data indicates that during this round of cycles, for every $1 increase in stablecoins, only $1.5 of altcoin market capitalization growth can be leveraged, representing a significant shrinkage of 82% compared to the previous bull market.
This article will conduct a comprehensive data analysis of stablecoins to deeply interpret the ultimate question raised by their growth in the cryptocurrency field: Where is the money actually flowing? As trading platform balances soar and the staking volume of DeFi protocols continues to rise, the deep penetration of traditional financial institutions' over-the-counter trading and cross-border payment scenarios, along with the currency substitution demands of emerging markets, are quietly reshaping the landscape of capital flow in the cryptocurrency world.
The market capitalization of stablecoins surged by $100 billion, with Ethereum and Tron contributing over 80% of the growth.
According to data from Defillama, from the beginning of 2024 to now, the issuance of stablecoins has skyrocketed from $130 billion to $235 billion, with an overall increase of 80.7%. Among them, USDT and USDC are undoubtedly the main forces behind this growth. On January 1, 2024, the issuance of USDT was $91 billion, and by March 31, 2025, it had reached $144.6 billion, an increase of about $53.6 billion, contributing 51% to the growth; USDC's issuance during the same period increased from $23.8 billion to $60.6 billion, contributing about 35% to the increase. These two stablecoins not only occupy 87% of the market share but also contributed 86% of the growth.
From the on-chain data segmentation, Ethereum and Tron remain the two public chains with the largest stablecoin issuance. Ethereum's stablecoin issuance accounts for 53.62%, while Tron accounts for about 28.37%, collectively accounting for 81.99%. Among them, the stablecoin increment of Ethereum from January 1, 2024, to April 3, 2025, was approximately $58 billion, with a growth rate of 86%, which is roughly on par with the issuance growth rates of USDT and USDC. Tron’s growth rate is about 34%, lower than the overall growth rate of stablecoins. Solana ranks third, with an issuance growth of $12.5 billion during the same period, achieving a growth rate of 584.34%; Base ranks fourth, with a growth of $4 billion in issuance, achieving a growth rate of 2316.46%. Among the top ten, Hyperliquid, TON, and Berachain are all new players in the stablecoin issuance field within the past year, with these three contributing approximately $3.8 billion in stablecoin issuance, accounting for 3.6% of the stablecoin growth share. Overall, Ethereum and Tron remain the core markets for stablecoins.
New funds are disconnected from the growth of altcoin market capitalization.
Despite the strong on-chain growth of stablecoins, the growth of altcoin market capitalization during the same period has been mediocre. Looking back at the period from March 2020 to May 2021, the overall market capitalization of altcoins (excluding BTC and ETH) rose from about $39.8 billion to $813.5 billion, an increase of approximately 19.43 times; during the same period, stablecoin data grew from $6.14 billion to $99.2 billion, an increase of about 15 times, both growing in sync. However, in this bull market phase, the overall increase in stablecoin market capitalization reached 80%, while the overall increase in altcoins was only 38.3%, with a growth of about $159.9 billion. In the 2020-2021 period, for every $1 growth in stablecoins, the overall market capitalization of altcoins increased by $8.3; in the 2024-2025 period, for every $1 added to stablecoins, the market capitalization of altcoins only increased by $1.5. This significant shrinkage in ratio indicates that newly added stablecoins do not seem to have flowed significantly into the altcoin market.
Where has the money gone?
The landscape of public chains has undergone reshuffling in this round of cycles, with Ethereum and Tron firmly holding their ground, while Solana and Base achieved breakthrough growth. Visually, the MEME craze on Solana has led the bull market process, but the speculation of MEME primarily uses SOL trading pairs, limiting the participation of stablecoins. Combined with the previous analysis, the growth of stablecoins is still mainly concentrated on Ethereum. Therefore, to explore the direction of stablecoin growth, one may still need to start from the movements of Ethereum or major stablecoins like USDT and USDC.
Before analysis, it may be helpful to list the common speculative directions regarding the flow of stablecoins in the market, such as payment scenarios, staking yields, and value storage.
Looking at the trading situation of Ethereum-based stablecoins, it can be observed from relevant charts that the trading volume of stablecoins shows regular fluctuations, which may hide the rules of stablecoin usage behind this volatility. From the distribution of holdings, USDT trading platform balances have surged significantly over the past year. On January 1, 2024, the trading platform balance was 15.2 billion tokens, which grew to 40.9 billion tokens by April 2, 2025, an increase of $25.7 billion, representing a growth rate of 169%. This growth is far higher than the overall issuance growth of stablecoins at 80.7%, and accounts for 48% of the increase in USDT issuance during the same period.
So where is the new flow of USDC going? This may help explain the market's capital flow to some extent. Analyzing from the perspective of holding addresses, the top holding addresses of USDC mainly come from DeFi protocols. Taking Ethereum as an example, the largest holding address of USDC is Sky (MakerDAO), with a holding quantity of 4.8 billion tokens, accounting for about 11.9%. By July 2024, this address held only 20 million tokens, representing a 229-fold increase in less than a year. Sky's USDC is primarily used as collateral for its stablecoins DAI and USDS, and its growth reflects the demand for stablecoins driven by the growth of DeFi protocol TVL.
AAVE is the fourth largest holding address of USDC on Ethereum. On January 1, 2024, AAVE's USDC holdings were about 45 million tokens, which increased to 1.32 billion tokens at its peak on March 12, 2025, an increase of approximately $1.275 billion, accounting for 7.5% of the new issuance of USDC on Ethereum. This indicates that the new issuance of USDC on Ethereum is primarily due to the growth of staking products. At the beginning of 2024, the total TVL of Ethereum was about $29.7 billion; although it has recently declined, there is still a stock of $49 billion (the peak TVL reached $76 billion). Based on $49 billion, the growth rate of Ethereum's TVL reached 64.9%, significantly exceeding the growth rate of altcoins last year and approaching the overall growth rate of stablecoins. However, the scale of Ethereum's TVL growth of $19.3 billion still has a large gap compared to the growth scale of stablecoins of $58 billion. Excluding the new issuance contributed by trading platforms, staking protocols have not fully absorbed the incremental stablecoins.
The rise of new scenarios: a paradigm shift from cross-border payments to institutional trading.
In addition to the demand for stablecoins driven by DeFi growth, consumption payments, cross-border remittances, and over-the-counter trading by financial institutions may also be new sources of demand for stablecoins.
According to official Circle data, the influence of stablecoins in scenarios such as cross-border remittances and consumer payments is gradually becoming apparent. The Rise report shows that about 30% of global remittances are achieved through stablecoins, with this proportion particularly prominent in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. From July 2023 to June 2024, retail and professional-grade stablecoin transfers in these two regions grew by over 40% year-on-year.
Circle's report shows that the net issuance of USDC minted by Zodia Markets, a subsidiary of Standard Chartered Bank, reached $4 billion in 2024. Zodia Markets is an institutional digital asset brokerage firm that provides over-the-counter trading and on-chain foreign exchange services to global clients.