Stablecoins are shifting past crypto buying and selling desks into real-world funds—however comfort comes at a value.
New knowledge from the New York-based blockchain analytics agency Artemis exhibits speedy development in stablecoin funds throughout sectors, at the same time as fees typically match or exceed these in conventional finance.
Abstract
- Artemis experiences $136 billion in stablecoin funds from 33 companies between January 2023 and August 2025, with B2B transactions main at $76 billion yearly.
- Tether’s USDT instructions 85% of the stablecoin market, totally on the Tron blockchain, adopted by USDC.
- Stablecoin funds face excessive fees, particularly on exchanges, and stay small in comparison with conventional monetary methods, with blockchain congestion additional escalating prices.
Artemis surveyed 22 stablecoin cost companies and supplemented estimates from 11 others, attributing $136 billion in stablecoin transactions between January 2023 and August 2025, with an annualized run charge of $122 billion. By way of exercise:
- B2B funds lead the pack ($76 billion annualized)
- Peer-to-peer ($19 billion)
- Card-linked ($18 billion)
- B2C ($3.3 billion)
- Prefunding ($3.6 billion).
Tether’s USDT dominates with 85% of quantity, adopted by Circle’s USDC, totally on Tron, Ethereum, Binance Good Chain, and Polygon.
Stablecoin evolution
Artemis co-founder Anthony Yim and knowledge scientist Andrew Van Aken word that stablecoins have developed from dealer instruments to a mainstream cost methodology. Main companies like Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Stripe are integrating them.
The dataset is being touted as the most complete to this point, protecting 33 companies and representing the majority of rising stablecoin cost quantity.
However development has a draw back: whereas peer-to-peer transfers on environment friendly blockchains like Solana can value fractions of a cent, alternate and conversion fees—together with buying and selling fees, community transfers, and FX spreads—can shortly erode that benefit.
Shark Tank decide Kevin O’Leary just lately highlighted the ache level on X: Ethereum community congestion drove fees previous $1,000 for small transactions, underscoring persistent value challenges.
“That’s like paying a thousand-dollar toll to drive on a one-lane freeway,” he mentioned. “It proves what I’ve been saying for years: when actual site visitors hits the system, it cracks below strain.”
O’Leary added:
“For over a decade we’ve talked about going on-chain, and now with real-world adoption lastly taking place, the cracks are exhibiting. Innovation isn’t nearly hype or hypothesis, it’s about constructing infrastructure that may truly deal with scale.”
Stablecoin regulation, conflicts of curiosity
The report arrives months after President Donald Trump signed the Genius Act, which established a federal framework for stablecoin issuers. Critics say it did little to handle shopper safety or conflicts of curiosity.
For instance, Trump and his household management round 60% of World Liberty Monetary, a crypto enterprise that launched its personal stablecoin, USD1. The agency just lately gained momentum when a $2 billion funding fund in the United Arab Emirates used USD1 to accumulate a stake in Binance, the globe’s largest crypto alternate.
This week, Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who served jail time after failing to stop felony money-moving exercise on his platform.
As with different stablecoins, USD1 is pegged to fastened property, reminiscent of the U.S. greenback, permitting issuers to generate income by collecting curiosity on Treasury bonds and different reserves backing the token.
Still, Artemis’ findings illustrate that stablecoin funds are surging throughout enterprise and shopper channels, regardless of remaining small relative to conventional methods.
