Stablecoins outrun Visa as onchain volume hits $46 trillion

Stablecoins have become the engine of on-chain finance. a16z’s 2025 report shows $46 trillion in annual transfers, nearly triple Visa’s. What began as a trading tool now underpins a global settlement network.

Summary

• Stablecoins processed $46 trillion in onchain transactions in 2025, nearly triple Visa’s annual volume, per a16z’s State of Crypto report.
• Monthly adjusted volume hit $1.25 trillion in September, while total stablecoin supply surpassed $300 billion, led by USDT and USDC.
• Ethereum and Tron dominate settlement activity, handling 64% of stablecoin volume.

In its State of Crypto 2025 report, American venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) said that stablecoins processed $46 trillion in transactions over the past year, surpassing Visa’s throughput by a wide margin.

a16z partners noted that the figure, even when adjusted to $9 trillion to account for inorganic activity, still handily surpasses the annual throughput of legacy giants like PayPal, signaling a fundamental shift in how value is moved globally.

Stablecoins Power a New Phase of Global Finance

The report details that monthly adjusted transaction volume for stablecoins approached a record $1.25 trillion in September 2025 alone. Notably, a16z analysts highlight that this surge in stablecoin usage has largely decoupled from broader crypto trading volumes, a strong indicator that these digital dollars are now being used for substantive economic purposes beyond market speculation.

According to the report, the total supply of stablecoins in circulation has swelled to over $300 billion, led overwhelmingly by Tether (USDT) and USDC, which together account for 87% of all tokens in circulation. In terms of settlement, the Ethereum and Tron blockchains remain the primary conduits, processing 64% of all adjusted transaction volume as of September.

The macroeconomic implications are profound. a16z data reveals that more than 1% of all U.S. dollars in existence now live as tokenized stablecoins on public blockchains. Furthermore, stablecoin issuers have collectively become a top-tier holder of U.S. government debt, now ranking 17th globally with over $150 billion in Treasury holdings.

A maturing ecosystem comes of age

Per the report, this stablecoin surge is the most visible symptom of a broader industry transformation. The a16z report authors declare that “this is the year the world came onchain,” pointing to a foundational maturity across the sector.

The number of monthly active crypto users now ranges between 40 and 70 million, representing an increase of approximately 10 million participants over the past year. This user growth is supported by a leap in underlying infrastructure; blockchain networks now collectively process over 3,400 transactions per second, a more than 100-fold increase in throughput from just five years ago.