Stablecoin Market to Hit $2 Trillion in 2028 Even as Velocity Doubles: Standard Chartered

Stablecoin velocity has present doubled successful the past 2 years, with coins changing hands an mean of six times per month, Standard Chartered flagged successful a enactment Tuesday morning.

That's prompted the slope to revisit a cardinal presumption down its stablecoin marketplace forecast. Geoff Kendrick, planetary caput of integer assets probe astatine the bank, said that's retired of sync with the bank's longstanding forecast. Standard Chartered has predicted that the stablecoin marketplace volition scope $2 trillion successful full marketplace headdress by the extremity of 2028—and it was premised connected velocity remaining stable.

Higher velocity, successful theory, means less coins are needed to enactment the aforesaid measurement of transactions, Kendrick wrote. But helium stands by the $2 trillion forecast for 2028.

"The bully quality is that these caller usage cases are, truthful far, additive to wide stablecoin transactions. Furthermore, the higher velocity of these usage cases has not impacted the low-velocity [emerging markets] savings usage case," helium wrote.

Kendrick recovered that it's USDC that has driven caller usage cases for stablecoins. The Circle-issued token, which accounts for astir 25% of the market, began decoupling from Tether's USDT successful mid-2024 arsenic it started displacing accepted banking rails—a inclination that accelerated aft the GENIUS Act established a national regulatory model for stablecoins past summer.

Then, starting successful October 2025, USDC velocity connected Solana and Base surged sharply. Kendrick attributes that 2nd limb to aboriginal AI cause payments via x402, an open-source outgo protocol developed by Coinbase. Those volumes person since pulled back, the slope notes, suggesting the archetypal surge whitethorn person been transient.

Billionaire Investor Stanley Druckenmiller Bullish connected Stablecoin Growth

"As a result, our $2 trillion marketplace estimation for extremity of 2028 remains intact," Kendrick wrote, "but we volition ticker stablecoin velocity much intimately going forward, arsenic we deliberation it is simply a cardinal input."

He added that USDT's velocity, dominated by lower-turnover emerging-market savings, has remained comparatively stable. The 2 marketplace leaders, the enactment argues, person diverged by usage case: emerging marketplace savings for USDT, TradFi replacement for USDC.