While cryptocurrency price swings grab headlines, a quieter transformation is reshaping how dollars move around the world. Stablecoins, or digital tokens pegged to the U.S. dollar, have grown into a $290 billion market that processes transactions at speeds traditional banking rails cannot match.
The stablecoin market has expanded from essentially zero in 2020 to nearly $300 billion today, according to CoinShares data presented during a recent VettaFi webinar. James Butterfill, head of research at CoinShares, noted that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has projected the market could reach $3 trillion by 2028.
That growth reflects stablecoins’ evolution from cryptocurrency trading tools into infrastructure for global dollar transactions, CoinShares analysts said during the webinar.
Matthew Kimmell, digital asset research analyst at CoinShares, explained that stablecoins enable dollars to move at the speed of email. Traditional international transfers can take days and cost large fees, while stablecoin transactions settle in minutes for pennies, he said during the presentation.
The scale of adoption has pushed major stablecoin issuers into the upper ranks of U.S. Treasury holders. Tether, the largest stablecoin by market value, holds enough Treasury securities to rank among the top 15 holders globally, ahead of many developed nations, according to Kimmell.
Tokenization Takes Shape
The stablecoin infrastructure is enabling a broader shift toward tokenizing traditional financial products. Investment products representing real-world assets like Treasury securities, corporate bonds, and private credit have grown to over $31 billion on blockchain networks, according to data presented during the webinar.
Butterfill noted that major financial institutions are building on these foundations. BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Visa, and JPMorgan Chase have all launched blockchain-based products or infrastructure, signaling mainstream adoption of the technology, he said.
The tokenization trend extends beyond stablecoins to include actively managed funds, commodities, real estate, and equity positions. Ethereum hosts the majority of this activity, but competing blockchain networks are gaining share, according to the CoinShares presentation.
Kimmell emphasized that this represents a fundamental infrastructure upgrade rather than speculative activity. The ability to program money — setting automated conditions for transfers, splitting payments instantly, or enabling round-the-clock settlement — creates capabilities traditional systems cannot easily replicate, he said.
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