It Turns Out Crypto’s Stablecoin Adoption is Around 1% of Previous Estimates

Stablecoins were all the rage in 2025. The GENIUS Act provided much-needed regulatory clarity for dollar-pegged cryptocurrencies, and tech giants like Stripe and Sony got involved with their own related products and services.

president Trump has also reportedly benefited greatly from stablecoins and the cryptocurrency sector in general, even though his USD1 stablecoin has been at the center of serious corruption allegations. Additionally, Wall Street veteran Tom Lee made headlines by referring to stablecoins as a ChatGPT moment for cryptocurrencies, echoing a report released by Citi earlier in the year.

The cryptocurrency industry has often pointed to blockchain data to prove that 2025 was indeed a record year for stablecoins in terms of adoption. However, a new report from McKinsey Financial Services suggests that the metrics used to show how much stablecoin adoption has increased in the past few years are very misleading.

Raw blockchain transfers are often cited as evidence of stablecoin adoption, but the truth is that only a small percentage of this activity — about 1% of the roughly $35 trillion total transaction volume — is actually related to real-world payments. This means that stablecoin adoption, which the report estimates at $390 billion for 2025, represents only about 0.02% of global payments.

According to the report, B2B payments and international transfers account for most stablecoin payment activity, and activities such as cryptocurrency exchanges that move funds between blockchain accounts, automated activity with smart contracts, and trading on decentralized exchanges should not be included in payment measurements. The report also notes that about 60% of this activity originates in Asia, adding that “activity today is driven almost entirely by payments sent from Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan.”

.@String analysis Looked into decentralized exchange (DEX) activity on Ethereum after people claimed that centralized exchange users were running to DeFi in response to the FTX debacle.

It turns out that the increase in DEX activity was mostly due to the presence of one MEV bot that was topping DeFi users. pic.twitter.com/ptkJw3SCoK

– Kyle Torpey (@kyletorpey) November 18, 2022

Of course, exaggerated or completely wrong adoption metrics are nothing new in the world of cryptocurrencies. Different data points, such as increased on-chain activity around decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, can be used to tell all kinds of tall tales. There has also been a lot of hype around metrics like transactions per second over the years, which tends to miss the point of what makes this technology valuable.

Although the adoption of stablecoin payments has been clearly exaggerated by various entities in the cryptocurrency industry, the report also notes that there are still signs of real growth. For example, stablecoin payments of $390 billion in 2025 are more than double what was seen the previous year. Additionally, the total supply of stablecoins has risen from less than $30 billion in 2020 to more than $300 billion today.

Of course, all of this has not necessarily been a positive adoption, as a report by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis noted that stablecoins now account for the vast majority of illicit cryptocurrency transfers. Reports have also pointed to extensive use of the USDT stablecoin by the Maduro regime, and Iran’s central bank’s approval shows why the US’s pro-stablecoin policy is a double-edged sword.

More generally, the prominence of stablecoins in cryptocurrencies has caused a rift between ideology-focused cryptocurrencies and fintech startups focused strictly on adoption metrics. While stablecoins were originally seen as a boon for cryptocurrency adoption, they have now reached the point where stablecoin issuers are launching their own blockchain infrastructure, adding another layer of centralized control to the technology stack.

While those like the aforementioned Tom Lee see the issuance of stablecoins and other tokens based on real-world assets, such as token stocks, as bullish for decentralized cryptocurrency networks like Ethereum, questions remain about how much value will accrue on these open protocols or whether stablecoin issuers and other centralized entities have succeeded in cutting these networks out of the equation entirely.