Stablecoin transaction count, volume up despite market cap decline

Stablecoins are surging in both their number of transactions and transaction volume, despite a reduction in overall market cap and new regulatory schemes trying to bring a close to the sector’s wild west period.

• Stablecoin usage soars in June even as market cap falls
• Revolut delisting USDT as MiCA-compliant stables take over
• MiCA 2.0 to include non-EU stablecoin issuers?
• Tether’s Q2 should be a doozy

Visa (NASDAQ: V), on-chain analytics say adjusted stablecoin transaction volume tied its all-time high of $1.78 trillion in the month of June, matching February’s total but 62% higher than May’s $1.1 trillion. (For the record, ‘adjusted’ volume eliminates “high-frequency and high-volume trading wallets, high-frequency and high-volume smart contract addresses, [and] bot-related activity.”)

The USDC token issued by Circle (NASDAQ: CRCL) claimed $1.2 trillion of June’s total, while Tether’s USDT accounted for $571.7 billion. From there, it’s a steep dollar-denominated drop-off, as the PYUSD token issued by PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) claimed a $2.42 billion slice, while the Global Dollar consortium’s USDG came in at $1.77 billion and Ripple Labs’ RLUSD added $754.3 million. (Circle’s euro-denominated EURC’s totaled $1.25 billion.)

The transaction volume surge is all the more impressive given that the overall stablecoin market cap has been shrinking. Since May 1, the total cap has declined by nearly $9 billion, with USDT down roughly $5.3 billion to $184.2 billion, USDC down ~$4 billion to $73.3 billion and PYUSD falling nearly $600,000 to $2.8 billion. USDG bucked this trend as its cap rose by nearly $800,000 to over $3.2 billion.

June also saw the adjusted stablecoin transaction count nearing 203.4 million, of which 145.8 million was claimed by USDT, while another 57 million involved USDC. That leaves just ~600,000 transactions involving all other stablecoins, regardless of what currency they’re based on. (EURC led non-dollar tokens with 180,000 transactions.)

In network terms, USDT’s primary transaction rails in June were Binance’s BNB Chain (62.6 million), followed by Justin Sun’s TRON network (50.17 million transactions), Solana (8.36 million), Ethereum (7.42 million), Celo (6.78 million), and Polygon (3.93 million).

Most of June’s USDC transactions (19.82 million) were conducted on Solana, well ahead of the 12.46 million on Base, the Ethereum layer-2 network operated by Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN). The rest of USDC’s top-five was filled by Polygon (7.96 million), Arbitrum (5.77 million) and Ethereum (3.98 million).

In terms of transaction volume, Base claimed the bulk ($564 billion) of USDC’s June total, followed by Ethereum ($389.4 billion) and Solana ($214 billion). USDT moved the most money on Tron ($318.8 billion), Ethereum ($163.7 billion) and BNB Chain ($56.3 billion).

Notably, the Stable network backed by Tether and its affiliated Bitfinex digital asset exchange handled only $33.8 million in transaction volume last month. But hey, Stable’s only been around a year, and Stable handled nearly 9x that sum when you add in the ‘unadjusted’ numbers, so don’t throw this stable baby out with the bathwater just yet.

Over the first half of 2026, total stablecoin adjusted transaction volume hit $8.8 trillion, only $2 trillion below 2025’s full-year total and $3 trillion above 2024’s tally. USDC accounted for ~70% of the H126 total, while USDT claimed a 25% share.

EU stablecoins shrinking in number, growing in market cap

Tether took a reputational hit last week as the crypto division of United Kingdom-based fintech Revolut announced it would delist USDT. The move is apparently intended to comply with the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulatory scheme, which took effect on July 1. Tether hasn’t sought MiCA approval, and is unwilling to comply with MiCA’s requirement for ‘systemic’ (aka large) stablecoin issuers to keep 60% of their reserve assets in cash in EU banks.

Revolut’s customers lost the ability to buy USDT on July 6 but can still deposit the token until July 30. Customers can continue to sell their USDT for cash or withdraw the tokens to an external wallet, but only until August 31. After that date, Revolut will automatically convert the value of any remaining USDT in customer accounts to the fiat currency of a customer’s home territory.

Revolut didn’t specify which of its customers will lose USDT access, but said the decision was made due to “regulatory and risk considerations.” MiCA applies across the European Economic Area (EEA), which includes all EU member states along with Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino previously called MiCA “a very not well thought legislation” that is “very dangerous when it comes to stablecoins.” Ardoino believes MiCA is “even more dangerous” for EU-based small- and medium-sized banks if stablecoin issuers face a run, aka the need to withdraw billions’ worth of their deposits on short notice, but the banks have lent it out in keeping with their fractional reserve policies.

According to the European Securities and Markets Authority’s (ESMA) Interim MiCA Register, there are 35 e-money tokens (EMT) that have so far made the grade. But to date, not a single registration has been given to an asset-referenced token (ART), the value of which can be based on assets other than currency (like gold), a basket of currencies, and more.

Only three of the approved tokens—USDC, EURC, and USDG—have a spot on the top-50 stablecoin market cap chart, and two of those are from a single issuer (Circle). There are 21 authorized EMT issuers licensed by 12 countries, led by France with six locally approved issuers (including Circle).

On July 5, EU-based fintech Decta issued its Euro Stablecoin Trends Report 2026, offering perspective on how eight MiCA-compliant euro-backed tokens fared as the regulatory implementation deadline drew near.

The eight tokens’ combined market cap grew 128% to US$674 million in the 12 months ending June 30, with EURC, EURCV, and EURI accounting for most of this gain. EURC’s cap doubled to over $433 million while EURCV, issued by French bankers Société Générale (NASDAQ: SCGLY), shot up nearly 181% to $137.8 million. EURI, issued by Luxembourg’s Banking Circle, didn’t launch until this January, but its cap currently sits at $38.6 million, down from its early-May peak of $60 million.

For the record, Tether made an investment of undisclosed size in StablR in December 2024, one month after it made a similarly unquantified investment in Quantoz.

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Will MiCA expand to cover non-EU stablecoin issuers?

On July 8, Euro News reported that the European Commission (EC) is consulting with stakeholders over whether to broaden MiCA’s scope to cover non-EU stablecoin issuers as well as “new tokenized means of payment and deposits.”

Euro News says this consultation will extend to September 30 but quoted an unidentified EU diplomat saying reopening MiCA “seems unavoidable at this stage, not only in light of the position expressed by several European institutions (not least the ECB), but also to cater for the most recent regulatory and technological developments worldwide.”

The European Central Bank (ECB) has repeatedly expressed unease with the growing popularity of dollar-backed tokens in the EU, labeling them a threat to monetary sovereignty. There are also concerns that MiCA’s stricter requirements regarding issuers’ cash reserves could spark a run on EU banks by non-EU holders of stablecoins whose issuers don’t redeem tokens directly with customers. (Similar redemption concerns have been expressed by the Bank of England regarding its sterling-backed stablecoin plans.)

The EC launched a separate MiCA consultation in May that ends August 31 that includes some stablecoin questions, including the aforementioned redemption concerns, but didn’t address tokenization.

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Tether’s Q2 should be a doozy

Getting back to Tether, its investments are by no means limited to MiCA-compliant stablecoin issuers. Barely a week goes by without Tether announcing a new stake in some company, including this week’s announcement of a $20 million stake in Mercado Bitcoin, Brazil’s largest digital asset exchange, which has been diversifying its operations to include stablecoin-based payments, tokenization, and a whole lot more.

Tether’s chief investment officer is Zachary Lyons, the former deputy of Richard Heathcote, who transitioned to a non-executive advisory position with the company in March after three years in the role. On July 6, Bloomberg reported that Heathcote is looking to sell “part” of his 1.26% stake in Tether and is working with investment bankers PJT Partners on discussions with potential buyers.

However much Heathcote sells, his shares in the company likely won’t enjoy the lofty $500 billion valuation Tether gave itself when it attempted to raise $20 billion from investors last year. That latter figure was reduced to $5 billion after investors reportedly demanded more transparency on the reserve assets supporting USDT’s $184 billion market cap.

Tether is infamous for a decade’s worth of promises to conduct a truly independent third-party audit of its reserves, but never following through. In March, following its fundraising fail, Tether announced that it had “entered a formal engagement with” a ‘Big Four’ accounting firm (later revealed to be KPMG) to conduct a “full independent financial statement audit” of its reserves.

Tether’s last ‘attestation’ of its reserves came out in May, meaning its Q2 report is due sometime next month. Whether that Q2 report will contain figures audited by KPMG remains to be seen, as Tether has said little about the progress its auditors may or may not have made since that March announcement.

Regardless of who’s doing the numbers, Tether’s Q2 is expected to be brutal. Unlike stablecoin issuers that restrict their reserves to cash, U.S. Treasury bills and other trusted vehicles, Tether’s Q1 reserves included $6.6 billion worth of the BTC token, $19.8 billion worth of gold, ‘secured’ loans of $15.8 billion and billions more in ‘public equities’ and ‘other investments,’ the latter category including ‘indirect gold, bitcoin and other asset exposure.’

That’s a problem because both BTC and gold suffered significant plunges during Q2, and if those ‘other investments’ suffered similar declines, longtime Tether critics believe Tether’s assets could be worth $4 billion less than they were three months ago. That’s more than half the ‘equity’ (aka surplus) that Tether claimed in Q1, and God help Tether if the individuals/entities on the other side of its controversial loans are under similar financial pressure.

Perhaps that explains last month’s announcement that Tether would attempt to monetize its gold bricks by bringing its gold-backed XAUT token to the Ledn digital asset lending platform. Ledn previously offered loans to users who supplied BTC and Ethereum’s native token ETH as collateral but Ledn ditched ETH a year ago, saying “Bitcoin-backed lending is what we do, what we do best, and soon, all we do.”

That BTC-only focus is now history, possibly because BTC has an undeserved reputation as ‘digital gold,’ so it’s not really cheating to add XAUT. It may also have something to do with the fact that Tether took an unspecified investment in Ledn last November, and Ledn has since incorporated USDT and Tether’s U.S.-facing stablecoin USAT. Funny how that works.

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