Bitcoin is not crazy yet, but stablecoins are going crazy first - 1.79 trillion monthly transaction volume makes banks unable to sit still? #USDT #USDC

Original author：AI悟空说

Original source：https://www.youtube.com/embed/0VzHNaNbEco

On-chain dashboard data released by payment giant Visa revealed that the adjusted stablecoin transaction volume in June 2026 reached US$1.79 trillion, breaking the record in February this year, increasing by 63% month-on-month and 125% year-on-year. The cumulative transaction volume in the first half of the year reached US$8.82 trillion, exceeding the level for the whole of 2024. What deserves more attention is the structural change: USDC accounts for about 70% of the adjusted trading volume, and USDT only accounts for about 25%. This ratio is completely opposite to the market capitalization ranking, indicating that USDC is more widely used in real payments and DeFi scenarios, while USDT is more used for value storage and inter-exchange transfers. At the public chain level, Coinbase's Layer-2 network Base ranks first with a transfer volume of US$565 billion, surpassing the Ethereum main network for the first time. TRON ranks third. PayPal's PYUSD has entered the top ten despite its small size. Regulation has become the biggest variable. EU MiCA will take full effect on July 1, 2026. Tether's failure to apply for authorization led to the complete delisting of USDT from the European compliance platform. Circle announced on July 7 that it had obtained the first MiCA electronic currency institution license and can operate as a legal electronic currency in 30 European countries. This qualitative difference has greatly lowered the threshold for bank cooperation. The U.S. GENIUS Act is implemented simultaneously, but the reserve requirements in the United States and Europe are incompatible with each other. Issuers need to maintain dual compliance systems, which adds hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual costs. At the institutional level, Standard Chartered Bank and Circle have launched integrated institutional USDC casting services, Bank of New York Mellon has expanded support, and large U.S. banks such as JPMorgan Chase plan to launch tokenized deposit networks in 2027 to cope with deposit losses. However, the latest annual report of the Bank for International Settlements classifies stablecoins as ETF-like rather than real currencies, warning that they erode bank credit and the monetary sovereignty of emerging economies. At the market level, the total market value of stablecoins has recently fallen by about US$10 billion from its high point. Both USDT and USDC have outflowed. Circle's stock price has fallen by more than 70% since its high point, reflecting the market's concerns about its business model that relies on reserve interest and regulatory suppression of interest payments. Overall, the transaction volume of US$8.82 trillion in the first half of the year marks that stablecoins have been deeply embedded in the global financial infrastructure, but compliance costs, regulatory fragmentation and bank counterattacks will determine its future direction.