Who uses stablecoins? What are they used for? Are they just a collateral type and settlement medium for crypto traders, or something more?
Even as stablecoins have become a breakout success, these questions have plagued the policy debate. Many still believe that stablecoins, however impressive the numbers may be, are limited to crypto use cases.
We all know that the metrics are strong and climbing. The supply of stablecoins in the aggregate is around $170 billion. They settle trillions of dollars worth of value every year. Around 20 million addresses onchain make a stablecoin transaction every month. Over 120 million addresses onchain hold a nonzero stablecoin balance. These numbers indicate that stablecoins are a serious parallel financial infrastructure – having started at near zero just five years ago.
But the research space around stablecoins has thus far failed to answer the question of whether usage is limited to crypto use cases, or has begun to spill over into the ordinary financial lives of users. We decided to fix that.
In this study, we investigate stablecoin usage in five emerging markets, where gaining access to dollars is challenging or impossible. Anecdotally, we know that stablecoins are crossing the chasm into being used as digital dollar equivalents, used for remittances, cross border payments, international trade settlement, and treated as savings instruments for regular folks. But proof has been hard to come by. So we undertook a survey of 2541 crypto users in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey, to better understand how these individuals engage with stablecoins in their everyday lives.
We supplement these survey results with onchain data, including novel estimates of stablecoin settlement value, as well as qualitative vignettes from the companies building at the frontier of this phenomenon.
Who uses stablecoins? What are they used for? Are they just a collateral type and settlement medium for crypto traders, or something more?
Even as stablecoins have become a breakout success, these questions have plagued the policy debate. Many still believe that stablecoins, however impressive the numbers may be, are limited to crypto use cases.
We all know that the metrics are strong and climbing. The supply of stablecoins in the aggregate is around $170 billion. They settle trillions of dollars worth of value every year. Around 20 million addresses onchain make a stablecoin transaction every month. Over 120 million addresses onchain hold a nonzero stablecoin balance. These numbers indicate that stablecoins are a serious parallel financial infrastructure – having started at near zero just five years ago.
But the research space around stablecoins has thus far failed to answer the question of whether usage is limited to crypto use cases, or has begun to spill over into the ordinary financial lives of users. We decided to fix that.
In this study, we investigate stablecoin usage in five emerging markets, where gaining access to dollars is challenging or impossible. Anecdotally, we know that stablecoins are crossing the chasm into being used as digital dollar equivalents, used for remittances, cross border payments, international trade settlement, and treated as savings instruments for regular folks. But proof has been hard to come by. So we undertook a survey of 2541 crypto users in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey, to better understand how these individuals engage with stablecoins in their everyday lives.
We supplement these survey results with onchain data, including novel estimates of stablecoin settlement value, as well as qualitative vignettes from the companies building at the frontier of this phenomenon.
