Catenaa, Saturday, December 27, 2025-JPMorgan analysts reaffirmed that the stablecoin market is unlikely to reach a trillion-dollar scale by 2028, projecting growth will largely mirror the broader cryptocurrency sector.
Analysts noted that the market expanded roughly $100 billion this year to over $300 billion, driven mainly by Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC.
Growth has been concentrated in crypto trading, derivatives, decentralized finance lending, and firms holding idle cash.
Derivatives exchanges added around $20 billion to stablecoin holdings, fueled by perpetual futures trading.
Analysts estimate the market may reach $500 billion–$600 billion by 2028, significantly below some bullish projections of $2 trillion–$4 trillion.
They highlighted that while payments adoption is rising, this does not necessarily translate into a larger stablecoin stock. On-chain velocity could reduce the need for high balances, with USDT’s annual Ethereum velocity around 50.
Hypothetical stablecoin use for 5% of global cross-border payments would require only about $200 billion in supply.
Analysts also cited competition from tokenized bank deposits, including JPMorgan’s JPM Coin, designed to provide digital representations of deposits for institutional clients on public blockchains.
These initiatives, along with projects such as SWIFT blockchain payments and central bank digital currencies like the digital euro and yuan, may limit stablecoins’ institutional share.
JPMorgan concluded that stablecoin growth will remain broadly in line with the crypto market and that greater usage for payments does not necessarily require a large increase in stablecoin supply.
Banks’ blockchain-based initiatives and tokenized deposits could further restrict reliance on privately issued stablecoins in cross-border and institutional use cases.
