America is steadily accumulating bitcoin while exporting dollar-pegged stablecoins to the rest of the world, according to a new report from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis.

The company said in its Wednesday report, "North America: Inside the Growth of Agentic Commerce," that the United States became a net importer of bitcoin in 2026 — meaning more bitcoin moved into the country than left it — the first time that has happened since 2022. The data shows institutions buying bitcoin throughout the year while retail participants have largely been selling.

"A dollar stablecoin is a way to hold dollars without an American bank account, and Americans already have one," the report read. "The rest of the world is pivoting to a digital dollar because it meets a need that American users don't share. Meanwhile, Americans are leaning harder on bitcoin as an infinitely scarce store of value." The passage captures the split at the center of the findings: dollar stablecoins flowing outward to users abroad, while bitcoin flows inward to American buyers.

U.S. dominance of bitcoin activity keeps climbing, Chainalysis added. Since spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) launched in 2024, America's share of global bitcoin activity has risen in every single reporting period — even as the overall U.S. crypto economy, valued at $2.78 trillion, contracted 2.2% during a brutal bear market and retained most of 2025's near-doubling.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved spot bitcoin ETFs in January 2024 after a decade of denying such products. The funds, managed by Wall Street giants including BlackRock, Fidelity and, most recently, Morgan Stanley, recorded the most successful debut in the history of ETFs. Institutions and Wall Street can now buy shares of the funds, which track the price of bitcoin and handle the buying and selling of the digital coin, giving investors exposure to bitcoin without directly holding and securing the asset themselves.

According to the report, the approval of the ETFs has helped the industry mature and turned the U.S. into an overall bigger bitcoin investor.

Stablecoins — cryptocurrency tokens designed to hold a steady value against a reference asset such as the U.S. dollar — have meanwhile transformed U.S. debt into a "currency-of-choice for peer-to-peer economies as well as businesses working across borders," the report continued. "In the 2026 period we continued to see stablecoins enter new use cases most especially abroad, benefitting the U.S. companies, and the U.S. government, with billions of dollars in economic activity," it added.

Policy has reinforced these trends. Since Donald Trump became president, he has signed a number of pro-crypto laws and executive orders. The GENIUS Act, signed in 2025, allows banks and other entities to issue stablecoins provided the tokens are backed by assets such as U.S. Treasuries and issuers provide monthly disclosures of their reserves — a structure that links stablecoin issuance to demand for U.S. government debt. Future Chainalysis reporting periods will show whether the U.S.'s net importer status and its rising share of global bitcoin activity persist.

This article first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and was written by Mathew Di Salvo.