Global stablecoin users have created the fifth largest bank in the United States

Stablecoin data is closely related to market sentiment and performance. According to Coingecko data, the market value of stablecoin USDC has fallen by more than $30 billion since its high in January 2022 (US$56,128,605,419), and has fallen by 41.6% in 2023 to $25,989,247,153, the same level as in July 2021. The outflow amount (7-day moving average) of USDC trading platform was US$16.16 million, falling to a one-month low.

As an important underlying asset in the crypto world, PayPal's entry into stablecoins has once again given the crypto world hope. In less than a month, the issuance of PYUSD has exceeded 40 million.

The Relentless Rise of Stablecoins is a research report on stablecoins co-authored by Peter Johnson, co-director of venture capital at asset management company Brevan Howard Digital, and Sai Nimmagadda. Peter Johnson shared the top ten points of the report on his social platform. BlockBeats summarizes them as follows:

1. In 2022, the amount of stablecoins settled on-chain exceeded $11 trillion, dwarfing the volume of transactions processed by PayPal ($1.4 trillion), almost catching up with Visa's ($11.6 trillion) payment transaction volume, and reaching 14% of the U.S. Automated Clearing House (ACH) settlement volume and more than 1% of the U.S. Federal Reserve Wire Transfer System (Fedwire) settlement volume.

2. More than 25 million blockchain addresses hold more than $1 in stablecoins. About 80% of them, or nearly 20 million addresses, hold stablecoins between $1 and $100. To give you a sense of scale, if a US bank had 25 million accounts, it would be the fifth largest bank in the US (by number of accounts).

3. Approximately 5 million blockchain addresses send stablecoins every week, a number that provides a very rough proxy indicator for how global users regularly interact with stablecoins.

4. The use of stablecoins has decoupled from the trading volume of cryptocurrency trading platforms, indicating that a large amount of stablecoin trading volume may be driven by non-trading/speculative activities. Since December 2021, trading volume on centralized trading platforms has fallen by 64%, and trading volume on decentralized trading platforms has fallen by 60%. During this period, the trading volume of stablecoins has only fallen by 11%, and the weekly active stablecoin addresses and weekly stablecoin trading volume have risen by more than 25%.

5. Of the approximately 5 million weekly active stablecoin addresses, approximately 75% have transaction volumes of no more than $1,000 per week, indicating that small, retail users may account for the majority of stablecoin users.

6. The supply of stablecoins was less than $3 billion five years ago, and now exceeds $125 billion (over $160 billion at its peak), and has shown strong risk resistance. Compared with the market value of the entire crypto market, the market value of stablecoins has fallen by about 24% from its peak, while the total market value of the crypto market has fallen by about 57%.

7. Less than one-third of stablecoins are stored on exchanges, and most stablecoins are stored in externally owned accounts (not exchanges or smart contracts).

8. Most stablecoin activity is using Tether (USDT), which accounts for 69% of stablecoin supply, 80% of weekly active addresses, 75% of transactions, and 55% of trading volume year-to-date.

9. Most stablecoin activities occur on Tron and BSC. As of now, Tron and BSC together account for 77% of weekly active addresses, 75% of transactions, and 41% of trading volume.

10. On average, the Ethereum blockchain is mainly used for higher value transactions. Although the Ethereum blockchain only accounts for 6% of active wallets and 3% of transactions, it accounts for 55% of the stablecoin supply, and nearly 50% of the stablecoin US dollar transaction volume is settled on the Ethereum blockchain each week.

As stablecoins continue to rise, we are still in the early stages of global stablecoin adoption. In the next few years, the circulating supply of stablecoins is expected to grow to trillions of dollars, and the annual transaction volume will reach hundreds of trillions of dollars. And stablecoins will increasingly provide financial services to the world's unbanked population, providing them with a way to get rid of highly inflationary currencies and triggering an explosion of innovation based on these new global open network currency circulation rails.