Glossary · Crypto
Stablecoin
A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency built to keep a steady price, usually $1, often by holding dollars or Treasury bills for every coin issued.
Also called: stable coin, dollar stablecoin, USDT, USDC
Estimated market value, November 11, 2026: Tether $177B, USD Coin $69.8B.
From $3.88B in June 2019.
In plain words
Bitcoin’s price can move 10% in a day, which is awkward if you just want to pay someone. A stablecoin solves that: it is a token on a blockchain meant to be worth exactly $1, every day.
The common way to hold the price at $1 is simple. The company that issues the coin keeps a dollar’s worth of cash, bank deposits or short-term US government debt (Treasury bills) for every coin. Send it a dollar and a new coin is created; hand a coin back and you get the dollar, and the coin is destroyed.
The best known are Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC), the two tracked on this site. Together they were worth about $247B on November 11, 2026, 63.5 times more than in June 2019.
Example
How a stablecoin issuer earns money
- Suppose 10 billion coins are in circulation. The issuer holds $10 billion of reserves, mostly in Treasury bills paying, say, 4% a year.
- The reserves earn $10 billion × 4% = $400 million a year.
- The coin holders receive none of it: the coin is designed to stay at $1, not to pay interest.
- Why hold it, then? Because it is a dollar that moves on a blockchain, any hour of any day, and can be traded on crypto exchanges.
The business works best when interest rates are high and people keep holding the coins.
One level deeper
There are three main designs. Fiat-backed coins (USDT, USDC) hold dollars and Treasury bills. Crypto-backed coins such as DAI lock up more crypto than the coins issued, say $150 of ether for $100 of coins, so a price fall can be absorbed. Algorithmic coins try to hold the peg with code and a sister token; the biggest, TerraUSD, collapsed in May 2022, wiping out tens of billions of dollars within days.
A stablecoin is only as good as its reserves and the issuer’s promise to redeem. In March 2023, when Silicon Valley Bank failed with part of USDC’s cash inside, USDC briefly traded at about 88 cents, until the bank’s deposits were guaranteed.
Stablecoins have become the everyday dollars of the crypto world: much of the trading on crypto exchanges is priced in them, and they are used to send money across borders. Their issuers hold large amounts of US Treasury bills.
Dollar stablecoins since 2019
The estimated market value of the two largest dollar stablecoins; at $1 a coin, that is also roughly how many coins are in circulation. USDC shrank by more than half between mid-2022 and late 2023, through the Silicon Valley Bank scare, then grew again; Tether dipped in 2022 and kept growing.
The numbers behind the chart
| Date | Tether (USDT) | USD Coin (USDC) |
|---|---|---|
| Jul 2019 | $3.56B | $395M |
| Dec 2019 | $4.29B | $490M |
| Dec 2020 | $20B | $3.28B |
| Dec 2021 | $77.1B | $41.4B |
| Dec 2022 | $65.9B | $43.9B |
| Dec 2023 | $90.7B | $24.6B |
| Dec 2024 | $138B | $41.9B |
| Dec 2025 | $186B | $77.5B |
| Nov 2026 | $178B | $70.7B |
Why it matters
They are the bridge between bank money and crypto: traders park money in them, and many DeFi apps lend and trade them.
They move dollars around the world in minutes, any day of the week, which makes them popular for payments and savings in countries with unstable currencies.
Their issuers hold large amounts of Treasury bills, so a run on a big stablecoin could spill into ordinary markets, one reason regulators watch them closely.
A common mistake
Myth: A stablecoin is as safe as dollars in a bank.
In fact: It is a promise from a private company, not a bank deposit: no deposit insurance stands behind it. If the reserves are lost, frozen or smaller than claimed, the coin can trade below $1, as USDC briefly did in 2023 and TerraUSD did for good in 2022.
Questions people ask
What is the biggest stablecoin?
Tether (USDT), with an estimated $177B in circulation on November 11, 2026, ahead of USD Coin (USDC) at $69.8B.
How do stablecoin companies make money?
From the interest on their reserves. The coins themselves pay holders nothing, while the issuer earns the yield on its Treasury bills and deposits.
Can a stablecoin lose its peg?
Yes. Fiat-backed coins have dipped briefly in scares, and algorithmic ones have collapsed: TerraUSD fell from $1 to a few cents in May 2022.
Read more on BigCapital
About the numbers
- The numbers on this page are recalculated from the data every night; the sources are listed at the end of the page.
- USD Coin (USDC) market capitalization: Coin Metrics Community Network Data, metric CapMrktEstUSD. License: CC BY-NC 4.0.
- Tether (USDT) market capitalization: Coin Metrics Community Network Data, metric CapMrktEstUSD. License: CC BY-NC 4.0.
- Market values are Coin Metrics’ estimates of the coins in circulation; issuers publish their own figures, which can differ.
- Crypto data: Coin Metrics Community Network Data, used under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.
- This page explains a term. It is not investment advice.