Stablecoins boom in 2025 — USDT, USDC and USD1 dominate
2025 has been a banner year for stablecoins. A new regulatory framework has been passed in the United States, and even World Liberty Financial, a firm linked to the president of the United States, has launched its own stablecoin.
According to data from DefiLlama, stablecoins have increased in market capitalization from approximately $205 billion to somewhere in the region of $263 billion.
Predictably, Tether (USDT) has maintained significant dominance over this market sector, representing approximately 62% of its total market capitalization.
Tether
Throughout 2025, USDT has grown from a market capitalization of approximately $137 billion to $162 million.
Tether has also been able to make inroads into the political arena thanks to Howard Lutnick, who previously led Cantor Fitzgerald — where Tether keeps much of its reserves — and who is now the commerce secretary under Donald Trump.
Read more: Tether: Ten years, 100,000,000,000 USDT, and still no audit
Tether has additionally stated that it intends to enter the US market, with CEO Paolo Ardoino telling Bloomberg that it’s “well in progress of establishing our US domestic strategy.”
Ardoino added, “It’s going to be focused on the US institutional markets, providing an efficient stablecoin for payments but also for interbank settlements and trading.”
It’s not entirely clear what this will look like, and there are a variety of exchanges accessible in the US that already offer Tether to users.
USDC
USDC, the stablecoin issued by Circle, has benefitted from Circle’s initial public offering (IPO) and the attention it brought.
Circle’s stock (CRCL) has risen from its initial price of $31 to $192, giving the company a valuation of over $47 billion.
Despite this initial surge, other stablecoins aren’t immediately rushing to go public, with Ardoino stating that Tether is “not interested in becoming a public company.”
Read more: Circle and Coinbase — a story of two public offering
The market capitalization of USDC has increased from approximately $44 billion to around $65 billion over the course of this year.
Dante Disparte, Circle’s the chief strategy officer, stated, “it signals strong bipartisan support for responsible innovation and sends a clear message that the US will lead in the regulation of dollar-backed payment stablecoins.
“We commend Congressional leaders for delivering a regulatory foundation that puts consumer protection, financial integrity, and U.S. competitiveness at the forefront.”
USD1
World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin, USD1, has benefited from its connections to the US President, Donald Trump.
The coin, which was initially launched in April of this years, quickly grew to its market capitalization of approximately $2.2 billion.
This was driven in large part by it being chosen for MGX’s $2 billion investment in Binance.
Read more: USD1 is a top stablecoin with no attestation and no transparency
USD1, unlike other stablecoins, maintains $0 in excess reserves; this potentially increases the risk to users.
TUSD
TrueUSD has been locked in a series of legal and financial problems brought on by using low-quality assets to reserve the stablecoin.
Justin Sun, who refuses to accurately characterize his relationship with the firm, has had to step in to bail it out after nearly all of its reserves became inaccessible.
TUSD had invested nearly the entirety of its reserves into a product that was almost entirely invested in speculative assets; when the fund denied redemptions, the coin was thrown into chaos.
Read more: TUSD up to 99.7% backed by speculative assets despite SEC settlement
Since then, Sun has been engaged in lawsuits related to the coin, despite having insisted that he doesn’t own it.
USDS/DAI
USDS, the stablecoin issued by the Sky decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) — formerly MakerDAO — has grown to a market capitalization of $4.43 billion from $3.7 billion at the beginning of 2025, according to data from the Sky application.
The total market capitalization of both USDS and the un-upgraded Dai totals approximately $7.5 billion.
This stablecoin, unlike those previously discussed, is a cryptocurrency-collateralized coin that’s more native to decentralized finance (DeFi).
Other stablecoins
USDe, the Ethena-based stablecoin that relies on hedging to maintain its value, has grown from $5.8 billion to $6.9 billion in 2025.
USDD, the Justin Sun-founded stablecoin, launched its version 2.0 this year, which transitioned it from aspiring to be an algorithmic stablecoin to instead aspiring to be more like USDS.
It has reached a market capitalization of $537 million.
Read more: Ripple dumps XRP to pump RLUSD — still 0.2% the size of USDT
There are also a variety of smaller, more traditional stablecoins that have experienced growth this year: PayPal USD (PYUSD) has grown from $500 million to $840 million, and Ripple USD (RLUSD) has grown from $53 million to $557 million.
First Digital USD (FDUSD) has seen its market capitalization fall from $2.1 billion to $1.45 billion, as its issuer has been targeted by Sun’s anger over the TUSD difficulties.
Broadly, the increased value of the cryptocurrency ecosystem as a whole combined with its embrace by the United States leadership has seemed to benefit many stablecoins through 2025 so far.
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