Viewpoint: In 2025, genuinely transacted stablecoins account for less than 1% of global stablecoin volume; the vast majority are “inflated” or non-genuine transactions.
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Viewpoint: In 2025, genuinely transacted stablecoins account for less than 1% of global stablecoin volume; the vast majority are “inflated” or non-genuine transactions.
According to China Securities Journal, the global stablecoin on-chain transaction volume in 2025—after deduplication and removal of artificial or inflated activity—was approximately $25 trillion. However, transactions backed by genuine payment activity accounted for less than 1% of this total; the vast majority were “inflated transactions.” This analysis covers 36 major stablecoins across 16 leading public blockchains, including Ethereum, TRON, and Solana. The report identifies three primary sources of inflated transactions: 1. Internal fund rebooking by institutions—i.e., internal transfers between different wallets or protocols under the same entity; 2. Protocol-level transaction splitting—where a single business operation triggers multiple internal calls, artificially inflating the reported transaction volume; 3. Use of stablecoins as intermediary assets in cryptocurrency trading for speculative purposes, resulting in the same funds being counted repeatedly. Regarding real-world payment use cases, in 2025, 15 leading crypto payment providers—including Coinbase, BVNK, BitPay, and Binance Pay—processed a combined $132 billion in stablecoin transactions. International card networks such as Visa processed approximately $4.5 billion in stablecoin-related transactions. Even if stablecoin usage linked to illicit activities—including money laundering, telecom fraud, and online gambling—is included in the calculation, transactions with genuine payment intent still represent less than 1% of the total.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsTechFlow News, March 16: According to China Securities Journal, the de-duplicated and de-inflated on-chain transaction volume of global stablecoins in 2025 totaled approximately $25 trillion; however, transactions backed by genuine payment activity accounted for less than 1%, with the vast majority classified as “inflated transactions.”
This analysis covers 36 major stablecoins across 16 leading public blockchains, including Ethereum, TRON, and Solana. The analysis identifies three primary sources of inflated transactions: (1) intra-institutional fund transfers—i.e., internal transfers between different wallets or protocols under the same institution; (2) protocol-level transaction splitting—where a single business operation triggers multiple internal calls, artificially inflating the reported transaction volume; and (3) use of stablecoins as intermediary tokens for cryptocurrency exchanges driven by speculative trading, resulting in the same funds being counted repeatedly.
Regarding genuine payment use cases, in 2025, 15 leading cryptocurrency payment providers—including Coinbase, BVNK, BitPay, and Binance Pay—processed a combined total of $132 billion in stablecoin transactions. International card networks such as Visa processed approximately $4.5 billion in stablecoin-related transactions. Even if stablecoin usage associated with illicit activities—including money laundering, telecom fraud, and online gambling—is included in the tally, transactions backed by genuine payment activity still constitute less than 1% of the total.
