Stablecoin adoption will soar once the last Grateful Dead fan is in the ground, and European bankers want to collectively plunge a dagger into the heart of dollar-backed stablecoin interlopers.
This week, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis projected that ‘adjusted’ stablecoin volume could hit $719 trillion by 2035, up from the $28 trillion in ‘real economic volume’ stablecoins processed in 2025. Lest you think that lofty projection is overselling things, Chainalysis says this figure could be achieved “through organic growth alone.” But add macro catalysts to this calculation, “and that figure could approach $1.5 quadrillion.”
Chainalysis bases much of this forecast on the fact that Baby Boomers will experience a dinosaur-like die-off over the next couple of decades, transferring $100 trillion in wealth to their offspring in the process. With younger demos less crypto-phobic than their parents/grandparents, Chainalysis theorizes that a good chunk of these Millennial/Gen-Z beneficiaries will choose to spend their windfalls via blockchain-based rails.
Stablecoin volume is often illusory, given that much of it involves speculative traders swapping stablecoins for other tokens. Chainalysis claims its ‘adjusted’ stablecoin volume—focused on payments, remittances, and settlement, while ignoring wash trading, internal transfers, and such—shows compound annual growth of 133% since 2023, which is how it arrived at its $719 trillion estimate.
But the aforementioned Boomer burials, plus ‘point-of-sale saturation’ as merchants and tradfi institutions embrace stablecoin tech—moving crypto payments “from a deliberate choice to default payments infrastructure”—brings us to the $1.5 quadrillion figure. For the record, this is higher than the $1 quadrillion that all global cross-border payments currently account for.
Artemis analysts claimed that stablecoin transaction volume hit $7.2 trillion in February, $400 billion higher than the Automated Clearing House (ACH) network processed that month. This marks the first time stablecoins have surpassed the ACH network, and current Artemis data shows that adjusted stablecoin transaction volume has hit $8.2 trillion over the past 30 days.
Artemis data shows an interesting divide between the two largest stablecoins by market cap, Tether’s USDT ($186.7 billion) and Circle’s (NASDAQ: CRCL) USDC ($77.3 billion). Over the past 24 hours (as of mid-day Thursday EST), Circle’s transaction volume is over $198 billion, more than triple USDT’s $60.4 billion.
And yet, USDC’s number of transactions over that period (26.5 million) is only slightly larger than USDT’s (23.3 million). Meaning individual USDC transactions are noticeably smaller than those involving USDT, reflecting USDC’s dominant role in both decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and agentic AI payments (which tend to be microscopic).
Other data points, like crypto-backed credit/debit cards, show USDT in the lead. In March, crypto card volume hit just over $600 million, a significant improvement from $187 million in March 2025. USDT accounts for $373 million of this volume, with USDC claiming $161 million, leaving the scraps for the stablecoin minnows. However, USDC’s share of this pie is growing fast, up from just 11.4% a year ago to nearly 27% now.
Circle to tradfi: let us do the work
Circle isn’t resting on its laurels, having just announced a new feature of its Circle Payments Network (CPN). CPN Managed Payments is intended to help payment service providers, fintechs, banks, and institutions “access the speed and efficiency of regulated digital dollars without managing digital assets directly.”
The service allows crypto-phobic entities to “abstract digital asset complexity” by sticking with the filthy fiat to which they’ve become accustomed, while Circle “manages the entire digital asset lifecycle.” In addition to the speed, 24/7 availability, and reduced transaction costs of stablecoin transactions, Circle assumes responsibility for ensuring these operations comply with local regulations.
CPN Managed Payments will facilitate payouts “across over 20 blockchains and domestic payment rails and connectivity to CPN fiat payout corridors worldwide.” Circle says it can offer entities a custom and “future proof” configuration in “weeks, not months.”
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said the new CPN service will address financial institutions’ need to “operate fiat-to-fiat and fiat-stablecoin payment flows without needing to stand-up and operate their own wallets and blockchain infrastructure, or handle digital assets and stablecoins directory (minting, custody, etc).”
The announcement is perfectly timed for Allaire’s trip to South Korea next week, where it will meet with local bankers to discuss the benefits of integrating stablecoins (particularly USDC) into their operations. Korean media reported that Allaire will meet with the heads of KB Kookmin, Shinhan Financial Group, and Hana Financial Group as they all await the conclusion of South Korea’s long and tortured process towards a regulated stablecoin market.
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JPM winning blockchain hearts, minds, and wallets in Japan, Argentina
While some household banking names are definitely stablecoin-curious, most of the sector’s smaller operators appear unconvinced of the benefits of embracing stablecoin technology. S&P Global Market Intelligence recently reported that only 7% of smaller banks are developing stablecoin frameworks, and none have yet progressed to the active pilot stage.
Concerns include losing deposits to platforms offering stablecoin rewards and the costs of incorporating new technology without any clear sense of how (or if) this technology might pay for itself. CoinDesk quoted S&P director of fintech research Jordan McKee saying the overall vibe among tradfi institutions is “early and cautious.” The efforts that are being made are “largely exploratory.”
S&P Global is hosting an online discussion on this topic (Navigating the Stablecoin Era—Implications for Bank Deposits, Payments, and the Corporate Landscape) on April 22. The discussion will focus on the threat posed by nonbanks gaining national trust bank charters, increased competition for customer deposits, and the potential erosion of fee revenue tied to existing payment rails.
Incumbent banking giants like JPMorgan (NASDAQ: JPM) are aware of the threat posed by this new technology. In his annual letter to shareholders this month, JPM CEO Jamie Dimon cited “stablecoins, smart contracts and other forms of tokenization” as among the “whole new set of competitors” in this game of financial thrones.
JPM has led U.S. banks in embracing digital assets, including launching its own stablecoin/‘deposit token’ JPM Coin as well as the Kinexys cross-border payment network. Last week, Japanese media reported that Mitsubishi Corp had reached a deal to use JPM’s Blockchain Deposit Account technology to boost cross-border transfers. Mitsubishi is JPM’s first Japanese client, following BMG, Siemens, and FedEx, which have already availed themselves of JPM’s digital ledger tech.
Meanwhile, Argentine media reported this week that “a handful” of local banks, including Banco CMF, are participating in “the testing of JPM Coin.” The report quoted CMF’s chief information officer, Maximiliano Cohn, saying the tests will be done “in principle without money, but the registration of the operations would be done with on-chain technology.”
To start, these tests will be a closed loop between the participating banks. The goal is to have “a shared debt registry” on-chain, and the assets in question “will gradually be tokenized and then [included in] smart contracts.” Other financial institutions believed (but not confirmed) to be participating in these tests are Galician, BIND, and Comafi.
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Qivalis wants EU to unite behind euro-backed stablecoin, UBS says ‘nah’
Like many emerging markets, Argentina has proven fertile ground for stablecoin adoption, given the local peso’s tendency toward abrupt, dramatic devaluation. But with JPM Coin denominated in U.S. dollars, some in the government may fear even greater erosion of the peso’s appeal as digital dollar options expand.
For some time now, central bankers in the European Union have been voicing concerns about the threat posed to the euro currency—and by extension, to these countries’ financial sovereignty—by dollar-backed stablecoins. Even the largest euro-backed stablecoin (EURC) by market cap is issued by Circle, an American company.
Enter Qivalis, the euro-backed stablecoin project backed by a consortium of 12 leading EU banks. Qivalis won’t launch its token until the second half of this year, but the goal is to eventually make it the dominant digital euro that isn’t the European Central Bank’s digital euro.
Qivalis CEO Jan-Oliver Sell recently told CoinDesk that dollar-backed stablecoins pose “ a real risk to Europe’s financial and digital sovereignty.” Qivalis’s goal is to boost the euro’s blockchain presence from its current nonexistent state (0.2% of transactions) to something more along the lines of the euro’s 20-25% share of ‘real-world’ global financial transactions.
Sell said Qivalis wants to become “the main issuer of euro stablecoins globally,” functioning not just as a token issuer but also building the infrastructure underpinning their use. The token “has to be available wherever the use cases are” and Qivalis is “looking to build that entire ecosystem [exchanges, custodians, DeFi platforms, etc.] around the euro onchain.”
Rather than having individual banks issue their own tokens, Sell said consolidating the EU’s major financial players behind a single effort “creates the distribution and liquidity needed to make it usable.” The goal is to “build a cornerstone of European digital autonomy. If we don’t have this, we will face dollarization.”
And yet, some folks just have to go their own way. On April 8, Swiss banking giant UBS announced a joint project with six other entities to launch a “CHF stablecoin sandbox.” The initiative will “test potential use cases” for a franc-based token (CHFD) to strengthen “both the Swiss digital money ecosystem and the competitiveness of Switzerland’s financial center.”
In addition to UBS, the initiative includes PostFinance, Sygnum, Raiffeisen (also a Qivalis consortium member), ZKB, and BCV. An entity called Swiss Stablecoin AG will handle token issuance and redemption. The announcement follows last year’s proof-of-concept deposit token testing by UBS, PostFinance, and Sygnum, conducted under the watchful eye of the Swiss Bankers Association.
Bitcoin Suisse AG previously attempted to launch a ‘payment token’ it called CryptoFranc (XCHF), but this was mothballed in August 2024. The company said at the time that the decision to scrap the token was meant to align with the company’s “strategic focus on crypto investment services.”
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Watch | MiCA and the Future of Stablecoins: What Comes Next for Tether?
Source: https://coingeek.com/for-stablecoins-to-grow-baby-boomers-must-die/
