Stablecoins AI Report

Stablecoin usage increased sharply in late 2025, with total market capitalization reaching an all-time high of about 314 billion dollars in mid October. Growth was led by Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC, with USDT alone rising to roughly 183 billion dollars and holding close to 60 percent of the total market. Adoption continued to expand as major financial institutions prepared new stablecoin based payment and settlement pilots.

Most stablecoins maintained their one dollar pegs throughout the period. The only significant incident was Ethena’s USDe, which briefly dropped to around 0.65 dollars on October 10 during a market sell off. The move was later attributed to a temporary pricing error on a single exchange, and USDe stayed near one dollar on other trading venues. The event did reduce USDe’s market capitalization by roughly 30 percent to just over 10 billion dollars, but no other notable depegs or stablecoin related hacks occurred during this time.

Regulators advanced several policy initiatives targeting stablecoin oversight. In the United States, Congress enacted the GENIUS Act, creating a national framework for payment stablecoins and requiring full one to one reserve backing. As a result, compliant stablecoins such as USDC began receiving treatment similar to cash equivalents under certain regulatory interpretations. Hong Kong introduced a new licensing structure for issuers, and the United Kingdom continued developing its own set of rules. Global regulators also warned that gaps remained in international standards and called for consistent requirements across jurisdictions.

Several emerging and regional stablecoins saw meaningful activity. MakerDAO, operating under its new Sky branding, began shifting from DAI toward a new stablecoin, USDS, which grew more than 20 percent in October to reach over 5 billion dollars in circulation while DAI usage declined. PayPal’s PYUSD expanded by about 15 percent to reach more than 2.7 billion dollars. Tether announced plans to release a U.S. regulated stablecoin called USAT by the end of the year. Adoption also increased in developing regions, including a pan African initiative that selected USDT for cross border commercial payments across dozens of countries.