Standard Chartered has pushed back its forecast for the stablecoin market to reach $2 trillion, moving the target from 2028 to 2030 after supply growth stalled with total sector value hovering around $309 billion.

The bank is not lowering its target. Geoffrey Kendrick, head of the bank's digital assets research, said he remains confident growth will materialize, but on a longer timeline than initially anticipated — regardless of the surge in blockchain transfer volumes.

Supply growth has stalled

Stablecoins are tokens designed to hold a fixed value against fiat currencies, most commonly the U.S. dollar, and are typically backed by reserve portfolios that include short-term Treasuries.

Kendrick noted that stablecoin supply has remained confined to a range of $300 billion to $320 billion over the past year, and he characterized the recent dip as cyclical, driven by negative developments in crypto markets.

Data from DefiLlama puts total supply at roughly $303.7 billion, comprising $184 billion in USDT and $73 billion in USDC. Allium reported the supply figure at $303 billion in August, an increase of just 6% over a year, with Tether and Circle commanding 85% market share.

Usage is rising even as supply sits still

Monthly transfer volumes reached approximately $10 trillion in 2026, up from $4 trillion in 2025, with a peak of $19 trillion in May. Overall monthly velocity — a measure of how many times each token in circulation changes hands — doubled from 15 to 30; USDC's velocity rose from 45 to 80, while USDT's held steady at around 7.

According to Kendrick, USDT is commonly associated with emerging-market dollar savings, while USDC is used for payment processing, financial transactions, and early AI-agent settlement.

Transfers are not the same as payments

Not all on-chain transfers represent spending. Allium's research found that only $4 trillion of economic activity can be attributed to the $85 trillion transferred between January and August 2026. Trade accounted for 69% of that activity, while payments represented 13%.

Even so, payments reached at least $401 billion, growing 42%. Businesses received 58%–64%, and cross-border payment volumes grew seven times faster than conventional fiat rails.

Visa's research, using on-chain analytics, measured quarterly velocity at 13.56 in late 2025, but just 0.08 for retail-sized transfers below $250. Such transfers represented less than 1% of activity — a distribution indicating that today's on-chain economy remains concentrated in large-scale transfers rather than everyday consumer spending.

What more usage, not more supply, could change

Growing transaction volumes are making institutional payments increasingly competitive. Kendrick identified Open USD, M^0, and the planned banking network A+ as challengers in the space.

"Issues like yield capture will ultimately determine how this sector plays out," Kendrick told The Block. Yield capture refers to the question of who earns the interest generated by a stablecoin's reserve assets.

Stablecoin reserves also carry implications for the Treasury market. Allium has estimated the Treasury will receive $170 billion of new demand, while the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has linked inflows to lower short-term yields. According to a previous report by Cryptopolitan, Standard Chartered's initial prognosis pointed to $1.6 trillion in new T-bill demand.

According to another BIS study, as much as 98% of stablecoin value is denominated in dollars — reinforcing dollar dominance while also raising digital dollarization risks.

Brookings researchers Nellie Liang and Brent Neiman have found that while stablecoins have the potential to speed up international remittances, consumer protection and sanctions enforcement concerns remain valid.

Regulation as the swing factor

The GENIUS Act, which established the first federal framework for issuing payment stablecoins in the United States when it was signed into law in July 2025, is expected to take effect in January 2027, potentially earlier if implementing regulations are finalized ahead of schedule.

Kendrick warned that USDT could lose ground "if global regulators were to closely follow the lead" of U.S. rules, which would encourage bank-backed competition.

Two near-term checkpoints follow from the data: whether implementing rules arrive ahead of the January 2027 effective date, and whether supply finally breaks out of the $300 billion to $320 billion range that has contained it for the past year. Whether stablecoin supply can keep pace with ever-increasing demand will determine if Standard Chartered's revised $2 trillion forecast for 2030 materializes.