The Year in Stablecoins 2025: Record Growth as GENIUS Act Opens the Floodgates

Stablecoins conscionable had their biggest twelvemonth connected record.

The full stablecoin marketplace capitalization has grown by 49% successful 2025, going from $205 cardinal successful January to $306 cardinal astatine the extremity of November, according to information connected crypto analytics level DeFi Llama.

The ballooning of the stablecoin class has been driven by precise beardown catalysts. In the past 12 months, stablecoin issuers person gained a U.S. regulatory framework, further clarity and rollout of MiCA successful the European market, and the clasp of them by institutions.

Stablecoins are integer tokens designed to clasp a 1:1 peg to fiat currency, similar the U.S. Dollar oregon the euro. Issuers clasp fiat wealth successful reserve with the committedness that tokens tin beryllium redeemed for the underlying currency astatine immoderate time. Two of the oldest and astir wide utilized stablecoins, Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC, person existed since 2014 and 2018, respectively.

But it wasn’t until July this twelvemonth that President Donald Trump signed the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act, oregon GENIUS Act. It was introduced by Sen. Bill Haggerty (R-TN) successful May, cleared the Senate successful June, and signed into instrumentality a period later.

“The transition of the GENIUS Act was rather important. That created a national regulatory model for stablecoins that we haven't had. So I deliberation it provides clarity to the market. Hopefully it volition code astatine slightest immoderate of the risks of stablecoins. So I deliberation it's a precise important measurement forward,” Timothy Massad, erstwhile Commodities and Futures Trading Commission chairman, told Decrypt.

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Even earlier the GENIUS Act was signed, the institutionalization of stablecoins was good underway. Payments processor Stripe unveiled plans to enactment stablecoin rails successful May, saying they would beryllium supported successful much than 100 countries. PayPal expanded enactment for PYUSD onto Tron and Avalanche networks successful September conscionable arsenic its stablecoin topped $1 cardinal successful circulation.

And Circle, which antecedently attempted to spell nationalist by mode of a SPAC successful 2022, yet made its debut with an IPO. When CRCL began trading connected the New York Stock Exchange connected June 30, it was truthful fashionable that the speech halted trading 3 times wrong the archetypal hour, with the terms of the token much than tripling successful that abbreviated span.

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But it’s not been creaseless sailing for each stablecoin issuers. In November, S&P Global Ratings downgraded Tether’s USDT stableness to “weak,” arguing that the inclusion of Bitcoin successful its reserves makes it susceptible to higher risks if the terms of BTC crashes.