More than $400 million in stablecoins is now processed every hour, according to Coinbase's latest stablecoin study, "The Always-On Dollar," as reported by BitcoinKE on October 21, 2026. The report found that about 73% of screened stablecoin transfers over the 12 months to July 31 occurred outside U.S. banking hours, highlighting demand for round-the-clock payments. That share reflects a structural difference in the underlying rails: stablecoin transfers settle on blockchain networks that run continuously, while traditional bank transfers are tied to banking hours and business-day settlement cycles.

Roughly 300 million unique addresses now hold stablecoins — a number that rivals the card footprint of established payment networks and has surpassed the combined card counts of American Express (155 million) and Discover (72 million). A comparison with mobile banking tells a similar story: the number of addresses holding stablecoins is nearly double the combined 156.7 million mobile banking users of JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citin
The report notes, however, that a person or business may control multiple addresses, so stablecoin addresses serve only as a proxy for adoption and are cited to illustrate scale.

Adjusted quarterly transaction volume has quadrupled since early 2023 and, if current growth continues, could reach $1.5 trillion by the end of 2027, according to the study. That $1.5 trillion figure is conditional on the current growth rate persisting, which makes the coming quarters a natural checkpoint for whether the trajectory holds.

The report also found that 7 of the 10 largest U.S. banks have tested stablecoins or tokenized deposits for settlement — a sign that traditional banking institutions are evaluating the technology for settlement functions of their own, not just for end-user payments. The emerging agentic economy features in the analysis as well: the study says AI agents will likely use stablecoins, citing a McKinsey estimate that roughly $3–$5 trillion in transactions could be mediated by AI agents by 2030. Machine-initiated payments of that kind would be suited to rails that operate without banking-hour constraints — the always-on quality the study's title emphasizes.

The findings point to stablecoins increasingly positioning themselves as payment infrastructure for cross-border transfers, business settlements, and future AI-agent transactions. Heading toward the study's 2027 projection window, the observable markers include whether quarterly volumes track toward the $1.5 trillion scenario and whether bank testing moves toward production deployment. The full report is available as a PDF.