The market capitalization of stablecoins has surpassed 300 billion USD, an overview of the four core tracks.

The global stablecoin market is set for explosive growth from 2024 to 2025, with a total market capitalization surpassing 300 billion USD and an annual growth rate of up to 82.9%. This growth is attributed to the historic regulatory breakthroughs of the US GENIUS Act and the EU MiCA regulations. The market landscape is diversifying, with the market shares of USDT and USDC dropping to 83.6%, while emerging projects like Ethena's USDe are rising. Dedicated stablecoin public chains (such as Plasma, Stable, Arc), yield-bearing stablecoins (such as USDe), enterprise-level payment infrastructure, and payment protocols aimed at AI agents make up the four core tracks of the stablecoin infrastructure revolution.

Historic Rise: Regulatory Breakthroughs Propel Stablecoins to Become Mainstream Financial Infrastructure

The total market capitalization of stablecoins skyrocketed from USD 166.3 billion at the end of 2024 to over USD 300 billion by October 2025, with an annual growth rate of 82.9%, marking its transition from a speculative tool to mainstream financial infrastructure.

• Regulatory framework established: In July 2025, the signing of the GENIUS Act in the United States established the first federal-level stablecoin payment framework; in December 2024, the EU MiCA regulation came into full effect, providing a standardized foundation for the industry.
• Diversification of market share: Although USDT and USDC still dominate, their market capitalization has decreased from 91.6% to 83.6%, leaving room for emerging stablecoins to grow.
• Emerging giants rise: Ethena's USDe market capitalization has reached 11 billion USD; PayPal's PYUSD market capitalization has surpassed 2.76 billion USD; the stablecoin market size supported by RWA (real-world assets) has reached 35 billion USD, with an annual rise of 46%.

(Market Share of Stablecoins | Source: Artemis)

Infrastructure Revolution: Dedicated Stablecoin Public Chain Reshaping Payment Experience

Traditional blockchains face pain points such as high fees, slow confirmations, and volatility in stablecoin transactions, which has led to the emergence of a new generation of dedicated stablecoin public chains that achieve a qualitative leap in payment performance through technological innovation.

• Performance Leap: These dedicated public chains generally offer high throughput of 1,000+ TPS, zero or very low transaction fees, and sub-second transaction confirmations.
• Gas token native化: By designing stablecoins as native Gas tokens, the impact of cryptocurrency price fluctuations on user trading experience is completely eliminated.

• Market Landscape: Plasma leads with Tether ecosystem and $5.3 billion TVL (Total Value Locked); Stable differentiates itself with institutional background and partnership with PayPal; Arc relies on Circle's compliance advantages and USDC ecosystem to secure its position.

Yield Innovation: Delta Neutral Strategy for Earning Stablecoins

Yield stablecoins directly embed returns within the tokens, providing users with potential returns higher than traditional bank deposits, representing a significant innovative direction in the application of stablecoins.

• Ethena USDe: The market capitalization skyrocketed from 86 million USD in January 2024 to 11.04 billion USD in October 2025, an increase of 13,750%, becoming the third largest stablecoin in the world.
  • Technical Core: Adopts a Delta Neutral Strategy (staking ETH/WBTC and hedging futures positions) to maintain stability.
  • Earning Model: sUSDe provides holders with an annualized return of 2.56% to 3.72%, derived from Ethereum staking rewards and perpetual contract financing rates.
• Sky Ecosystem (formerly MakerDAO): The reward-based stablecoin USDS has a market capitalization of 8 billion USD, providing an annual yield of 4.75% through the Sky Savings Rate (SSR) mechanism, with earnings sourced from protocol surplus (lending and liquidation income).

Application Expansion: The Combination of Stablecoin Payments and AI Agency Economy

Stablecoins are reshaping global payment infrastructure while giving rise to the next-generation payment protocols aimed at autonomous trading by AI agents.

• Global Payment Reshaping: By 2025, the cross-border payment processing volume of stablecoins will reach $46 trillion, accounting for more than 50% of Visa's throughput. Stablecoins will reduce cross-border payment costs from 2% to 7% to between 0.5% and 2%, and settlement times will be shortened from 3 to 5 working days to less than 3 minutes.
• The Rise of BVNK: BVNK processes over $20 billion in transactions annually and has secured strategic investment from Citi Ventures. Mainstream CEX and Mastercard are negotiating to acquire BVNK at a valuation between $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion, highlighting its core position in enterprise-level stablecoin payments.
• AI Agent Payment: KITE AI is dedicated to building the first Layer-1 blockchain optimized for the AI agent economy, and its encrypted agent identity system (AIR) addresses the trust and payment issues among AI agents.
• x402 protocol: Driven by mainstream CEX, Google, Cloudflare, etc., it redefines the HTTP payment standard, achieving trustlessness and extremely low-cost autonomous transactions between machines.

Investment Outlook and Risks: Infrastructure and Compliance as Focal Points

The stablecoin sub-sector has transitioned from conceptual speculation to practical applications. Among the four major tracks of dedicated public chains, enterprise payments, income-generating models, and AI applications, dedicated stablecoin public chains demonstrate the greatest potential for premium valuation.

• Investment Focus: Plasma is worth paying attention to due to its technological moat and ecosystem support; the high valuation of BVNK and the possibility of acquisition validates the immense value of enterprise-level payment solutions; although AI integrated applications are in their early stages, their growth has exceeded expectations, making them suitable for high-risk tolerance investors.
• Core Risks: Regulatory risk remains the biggest variable, as the implementation details and enforcement standards of the GENIUS Act and MiCA regulations are still evolving. In addition, the strategic positioning of traditional financial giants such as Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard will intensify market competition.

Conclusion

The breakthrough of stablecoins with a market capitalization of 300 billion USD is a milestone in the modernization of global financial infrastructure. Dedicated public chains have addressed efficiency pain points, while yield-generating stablecoins offer new revenue models. The integration of enterprise-level payments and the AI agent economy has opened up trillion-level application scenarios. As regulatory frameworks mature and core infrastructures are gradually launched, stablecoins are reshaping the global payment landscape at an unprecedented speed, providing significant investment opportunities for early participants.