Stablecoin Payments: The Truth Behind the Numbers

In linking the speed and efficiency of blockchain infrastructure with traditional financial systems, digital currency appears poised to lead the next wave of innovation in money movement. Stablecoins are a major component of this story. But outside financial infrastructure and cryptocurrency trading, how much impact are they really having? In a unique collaboration, BCG and Allium Labs set out to discover the reality behind the hype.¹ Our research reveals that only a small proportion of stablecoin activity today drives real economy payments. On the other hand, an annual growth rate of 60% suggests a significant runway for digital assets in some use cases. There is much to play for as the industry continues to evolve.

Public blockchain data suggests there is more than $62 trillion of stablecoin transfers annually, but our analysis reveals that real economic activity amounts to just $4.2 trillion, or about 7% of the total. In short, the vast majority of stablecoin activity relates to trading, derivative collateral transfers, protocol mechanics, and intermediary routing, rather than payments for goods and services.

For our initial sizing, we use a conservative, behavior-based methodology. This reveals that in 2025, there was approximately $350–$550 billion of observable bilateral payments for goods and services. We exclude large categories of off-chain usage, including internal exchange settlements and stablecoin card-based payments. As such, the numbers should be interpreted as directionally robust lower bounds. In future, we intend to expand our digital asset flows dataset, adding additional coverage and more in-depth analysis.