Stablecoins Moved $35 Trillion Last Year but Only 1% Was for ‘Real World’ Payments
Despite Record‑Breaking Blockchain Activity, Stablecoins Struggle to Become Everyday Money
Subtitle
Stablecoins, the digital assets designed to maintain a stable value—usually pegged to a fiat currency like the U.S. dollar—have captured headlines for their explosive on‑chain transaction volumes. In 2025, stablecoins facilitated an astonishing $35 trillion in blockchain transfers. However, new data reveals a striking contrast: only about 1 % of that volume was actually used for “real world” payments like remittances, payroll, or commercial transactions. This gap highlights both the immense growth of crypto markets and the slow pace of real‑world adoption.
Record Transaction Volume, Modest Payment Use
The headline number—$35 trillion—sounds impressive when compared to traditional payment systems. But the lion’s share of this volume was not tied to everyday financial activity. According to a joint report by McKinsey and Artemis Analytics, only around $380 billion of the $35 trillion transferred via stablecoins in 2025 was linked to genuine payment use cases such as remittances, pay‑for‑goods/services, or payroll. That amounts to roughly 0.02 % of total global payment flows, when compared to the more than $2 quadrillion that traditional payment systems handle in a typical year.
The stark contrast underscores a fundamental reality: stablecoins are far more active as mechanisms within the cryptocurrency ecosystem than as tools for everyday payments.
What’s Driving the Huge Transaction Volumes?
So what accounts for the overwhelming majority of stablecoin activity? The answer points to crypto trading, decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, and internal transfers between wallets and exchanges. Many market participants use stablecoins as a proxy for U.S. dollars in the crypto ecosystem: to hedge price volatility, facilitate arbitrage, or move value between different decentralized applications (dApps).
This means that although blockchain data records an enormous number of transfers, most of these transactions are not payments in the traditional sense—they do not represent the purchase of goods, settlement of an invoice, or the transfer of money between two parties outside of the crypto market.
Stablecoins in the Real World: Growing but Small
Despite the overwhelming dominance of trading‑related volume, stablecoin payments are growing—just not yet at mainstream scale. For example:
Business‑to‑business (B2B) transactions and card‑linked stablecoin spending saw triple‑digit growth in 2025, indicating that enterprises and payment processors are starting to use tokenized cash rails more actively.
Peer‑to‑peer (P2P) transfers—moving money between individuals—also contributed to real‑world usage, albeit at levels far smaller than trading activity.
Yet even with these gains, real payments remain a tiny fraction of total activity. For context, stablecoin payments’ $380 billion total is dwarfed not only by global payment volumes but even by the use of digital payment networks like Visa and PayPal.
Why Isn’t Adoption Higher?
Several structural and market factors help explain why stablecoins haven’t become widely used for everyday transactions:
1. Infrastructure and Integration Barriers: Traditional merchants and payment processors still lack seamless integrations with blockchain payment rails. Legacy systems are deeply entrenched, and adopting crypto rails requires upgrades, compliance frameworks, and risk management tools.
2. Regulatory Uncertainty: In many jurisdictions, stablecoins face unclear or evolving regulation. Questions around their classification—as securities, payments instruments, or banking liabilities—create caution among both businesses and consumers.
3. Perception and Trust Issues: Despite greater awareness, many consumers and businesses remain wary of digital asset payments due to concerns about security, counterparty risk, and price volatility in the broader crypto ecosystem.
Potential and Future Outlook
While stablecoin use for real‑world payments is currently small, there are signs of significant future potential—especially if regulatory clarity improves and infrastructure matures. Analysts note that stablecoins could offer advantages such as lower costs, faster settlement, and global transferability compared to traditional rails.
Bloomberg Intelligence, for instance, projects stablecoin payment volumes could exceed $56 trillion by 2030 under current trends, reflecting continued growth in cross‑border transfers and other business applications.
Still, such projections hinge on overcoming key challenges—chief among them regulatory acceptance and broad merchant adoption. Stablecoin adoption could expand rapidly if integrated into mainstream financial infrastructure, offering real utility beyond the crypto trading sphere.
What This Means for Global Finance
The stablecoin phenomenon highlights a broader tension within digital finance: innovation outpaces adoption. On one hand, stablecoins have proven extremely useful within crypto networks, where they serve as efficient liquidity and settlement tools. On the other hand, their penetration into real‑world economic activity—payments, payroll, remittances—is still embryonic.
The million‑dollar question for policymakers and financial institutions is whether and how stablecoins can bridge that gap. A clearer regulatory environment, improved connectivity with banking systems, and robust compliance frameworks could unlock stablecoins’ potential as a global payments method.
Conclusion
Stablecoins’ $35 trillion transaction volume in 2025 underscores their prominence in the crypto ecosystem—but it also reveals a gap between on‑chain activity and everyday economic use. With just around 1 % of transactions tied to real‑world payments, stablecoins are still far from displacing traditional payment systems. However, ongoing growth in enterprise usage, receding regulatory uncertainty, and infrastructure development hint at a future where stablecoins play a more integral role in digital finance and global commerce.
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