Are Local Currency Stablecoins Being Used as Money?
New data from Visa and Dune suggests that non-USD stablecoins are increasingly being used as functional local currency rather than speculative instruments. Supply reached $1.1 billion in February, marking a threefold increase from January 2023, while aggregated transfer volume rose more than 1,600% to $10 billion over the same period.
The shift is visible in how these assets are held and used. “Unlike USD stablecoins — often deployed into DeFi for yield — local currency stablecoins are primarily held in user wallets, centralized exchanges, and institutional treasuries,” the report states. “This distribution reflects their role as operational money for cross-border payments, remittances, B2B settlement, and FX management.”
Adoption metrics reinforce this trend. More than 1.2 million addresses now hold non-USD stablecoins, while the number of unique sending addresses has grown from around 6,000 in early 2023 to 135,000. Nearly half of total supply sits in unidentified wallets, with another 25% on centralized exchanges, pointing to a mix of retail and institutional usage.
How Much Activity Is Actually Driven by DeFi?
While decentralized finance remains part of the ecosystem, its role is more limited compared to USD-pegged stablecoins. Around 13% of supply is held in issuer treasuries or governance-controlled wallets for liquidity management and incentives, while 7.5% is deployed in lending protocols and just 2% in decentralized exchange liquidity pools.
The data suggests that most non-USD stablecoin activity is tied to real-world financial flows rather than yield generation. This distinction becomes clearer when adjusting for market concentration.
“Excluding EURC, other stablecoins show consistent weekend slowdowns, a pattern consistent with business payments, payroll cycles, and treasury settlement,” the report notes. “The rest of the market appears to be used far more as a transactional and settlement layer.”
Circle’s EURC dominates the segment, accounting for more than 90% of transfer volume, which skews aggregate data and can obscure how other currencies are being used.
Investor Takeaway
Which Currencies Are Driving Growth?
Euro-denominated stablecoins dominate the non-dollar segment, representing over 80% of market capitalization and roughly 85% of total transfer volume. Their share of transferred value has increased sharply, rising from 50%–70% before 2024 to around 85% this year.
Other currencies are emerging but remain smaller in scale. Brazilian real stablecoins account for about 10% of supply and volume, while Singapore dollar and Japanese yen stablecoins are growing from a lower base.
“Other LatAm currencies (COP, MXN) and markets such as ZAR, CAD, AUD, and CHF show strong growth from small bases but remain concentrated, with fewer than 1,000 monthly senders in most cases,” the report adds.
Despite rapid growth, euro stablecoins still represent only about 0.3% of the global stablecoin market, highlighting the dominance of dollar-based assets.
Investor Takeaway
How Large Could the Market Become?
The total stablecoin market cap currently exceeds $310 billion, with USDT accounting for more than 60% and USDC roughly 25%. Non-USD stablecoins remain a small fraction of the overall market but are growing at a faster rate.
“If Euro stablecoins were to reach even a fraction of the Euro’s international share, that could imply a market cap in the tens of hundreds of billions,” the report states, citing projections that place potential growth between $25 billion and $1,100 billion by the end of the decade.
The data points to a structural shift in how stablecoins are being used. While dollar-pegged assets continue to dominate liquidity and DeFi activity, local currency stablecoins are emerging as tools for payments, settlement, and currency access in regional markets.
The divergence in use cases suggests that future growth in the sector may be driven less by speculative demand and more by integration into existing financial systems.
