The truth behind the $35 trillion in annual stablecoin transactions: the gap between false fire and reality

According to the latest report jointly released by consulting giant McKinsey and blockchain data company Artemis Analytics, the transaction scale of stablecoins on blockchain networks will exceed the $35 trillion mark in 2025, becoming the brightest number in the crypto ecosystem. But the flip side of this number is less well known: only about 1% of these transactions are actually used for real-world payments. This contrast reveals a vast gap between stablecoin market hype and real-world applications.

35 Trillion VS 390 Billion: A Giant Digital Game for Stablecoin Transactions

On the surface, stablecoins have shown impressive market size. But when researchers delved into the $35 trillion transactions, a surprising truth emerged: stablecoin transactions that truly reflected real-world payment behavior were only $3,800 to $390 billion.

What is this concept? $35 trillion is more than three times global GDP, but 99% of those transactions are not “paid” in the usual sense. Analysts at McKinsey and Artemis noted that most stablecoin trading volume represents exchanges between cryptocurrencies, internal account transfers, or protocol-level operations that do not involve end consumers — in other words, the movement of funds between exchanges, wallets, and smart contracts, rather than actual business transactions or consumer payments.

In comparison, the global traditional payments market processes a total of about $2000 trillion in transactions per year. This means that stablecoins account for only 0.02% of the global payment market, and while stablecoin trading volume seems huge, it accounts for a negligible proportion in the real payment application field.

Three major application areas where stablecoins are truly implemented

Since most stablecoin transactions are not payments, where is the real payment of $390 billion used? The report gives a specific distribution of applications.

Business-to-business transactions (B2B) have become the largest application scenario for stablecoin payments, last year’s transaction volume reached $226 billion. This includes business scenarios such as cross-border trade settlement, supply chain payment, and inter-enterprise transfers. Compared with the inefficiency and high cost of traditional SWIFT systems, stablecoin-based B2B payments have shown the advantages of fast speed and low fees, and have gradually gained recognition from enterprises.

Payroll and international money transfersaccounted for the second proportion, with a total scale of 90 billion US dollars. Many freelancers and employees of multinational corporations receive compensation through stablecoins, and the remittance industry sees a huge opportunity to replace traditional Western Union with stablecoins. Stablecoin issuers such as Circle and Tether are heavily promoting their tokens as a solution to reduce the cost of remittances, especially in emerging markets.

Capital markets activities and automated settlementsAlthough it is the smallest, only $8 billion last year, it has the fastest growth rate. This part mainly includes financial market operations such as fund clearing and securities transaction settlement. With the improvement of blockchain infrastructure, the growth space in this field is generally optimistic in the industry.

Traditional payment giants vs. crypto companies in the battle for stablecoins

The real-world application potential of stablecoins has already attracted the attention of participants from all sides. Traditional payment giants Visa and Stripe are accelerating their stablecoin deployment, viewing it as an important part of the future payment infrastructure. At the same time, crypto-native companies such as Circle and Tether are also making efforts to compete for the right to speak in stablecoin payments.

While stablecoins have not yet shaken Visa or Mastercard’s dominance in global payments, the intensity of competition shows that all parties are preparing for the future payment ecosystem. This competition has also promoted the diversification and improvement of stablecoin application scenarios.

Assessing the Long-Term Potential of Stablecoins: Starting from Reality

Analysts at McKinsey and Artemis emphasized that while the current true payment scale of stablecoins is far from the media’s touting of “trading volume surpassing Visa,” this does not mean that stablecoins have no prospects. Instead, they believe the findingIt provides a clearer benchmark for the development path of stablecoins。

“To be clear, the real stablecoin payout scale is much lower than conventional estimates,” the analyst noted. But this does not diminish the long-term potential of stablecoins as payment channels. Instead, it establishes a clearer benchmark for assessing the current state of the market and what is needed for stablecoins to expand. "

This means that stablecoins do have room for future growth, but they need to abandon overly optimistic illusions and take root in real application scenarios. Stablecoin applications in enterprise payments, cross-border remittances, capital market settlements, and other fields have obvious advantages over traditional solutions, which are the real driving forces driving the adoption of stablecoins.

In this year 2025, known as the “first year of stablecoins”, while the transaction numbers are impressive, it is more important to understand the true meaning behind the numbers - the success or defeat of stablecoins will ultimately be determined by their implementation in real business.