Stablecoins – tokenized representations of fiat currencies circulating on blockchains – are unambiguously the “killer app” of crypto so far. There are over $160 billion worth of stablecoins in circulation today, up from single digit billions as recently as 2020. Over 20 million addresses make a stablecoin transaction on public blockchains every month. And in the first half of 2024, stablecoins settled (according to our adjusted estimates) over $2.6 trillion dollars worth of value. Stablecoins offer considerable advantages relative to existing payment systems, including native programmability, strong auditability properties, fast settlement, the ability to self-custody, and native interoperability.
Key findings:
• While access to crypto (50 percent) in the most popular motivation to use stablecoins, non-crypto uses such as access to dollars (47 percent), yield generation (39 percent), and transactional purposes are popular
• Stablecoins are preferred to USD banking due to yield, efficiency, and lower likelihood of government interference
• 57 percent of users report an increase in stablecoin usage in the past year, and 72 percent believe that they will increase their stablecoin usage in the future
• In cases where Tether is preferred, the primary reasons reported are its network effects, followed by user trust, liquidity, and its track record relative to other stablecoins
• Of the non-trading use cases, currency conversion (to dollars) is the most frequently reported activity, followed by paying for goods, cross border payments, and paying or receiving a salary
• Ethereum is the most popular blockchain among sampled users, followed by Binance Smart Chain, Solana, and Tron
• The most popular wallets among respondents are Binance (exchange), followed by Trust wallet, Metamask, Coinbase wallet, crypto.com, and Phantom wallet.