# Stablecoin Market Holds Near $303 Billion as Payment Estimates Trail Transfers By Enna Lee Canonical URL: https://www.tokenpost.com/news/investing/34284 Published: 2026-10-18T07:50:39.000Z Updated: 2026-10-18T07:50:39.000Z Section: Investing > Estimates of 2025 gross transfers range from $28 trillion to more than $62 trillion, while observable goods-and-services payments are estimated at $350 billion to $550 billion. Stablecoins had a tracked market capitalization of $302.564 billion on Oct. 17, while estimates of their 2025 payment activity remained far below gross transfer totals, underscoring how blockchain volume can include movements unrelated to commerce. Tether USD (USDT) represented 60.63% of the tracked supply. An early-April estimate put the market at about $315 billion and the dollar-denominated share at about 98%. Gross-transfer estimates for 2025 ranged from $28 trillion to more than $62 trillion, while another estimate put the total at about $35 trillion. The figures use different methods and are not directly comparable. One analysis behind the estimate above $62 trillion classified $4.2 trillion, or about 7%, as real economic activity. Totals that remove transfers between wallets owned by the same party are much lower. The gap reflects what blockchain records capture. Most stablecoins are built to keep their market value close to a reference, usually the U.S. dollar. They are used for crypto trading and collateral as well as payments. A blockchain record shows a token movement, but not necessarily its economic purpose; one transaction can also generate multiple transfer-event logs. An analysis of 593 million transfer-event logs from 141 million Ethereum transactions in 2025 involving USDT, USD Coin (USDC) and PayPal USD (PYUSD) found nearly 60% of events occurred within complex transactions. That makes it unreliable to treat every event as a separate payment. Payment-focused estimates put observable bilateral goods-and-services payments in 2025 at $350 billion to $550 billion. The range is a lower bound that excludes some activity, including stablecoin card payments and internal exchange settlements. Another estimate annualized December 2025 activity to about $390 billion after separating payments from trading, internal movements and automated blockchain activity. The distinction between transfer totals and commercial payments also appears in [TokenPost’s earlier coverage of transfer counts and cumulative volume](). For the first eight months of 2026, an estimate put stablecoin payment flows at $401 billion to $527 billion, up 42% to 63% from the same period a year earlier. “While stablecoin transaction volumes seem large – some $35 trillion annually in 2025 – their use for real economy transactions is modest,” said Pablo Hernández de Cos, general manager of the Bank for International Settlements. ## Links in this article - [TokenPost’s earlier coverage of transfer counts and cumulative volume](https://www.tokenpost.com/news/technology/27616)