Standard Chartered keeps $2T stablecoin call, pushes date to 2030

Standard Chartered still wants a $2 trillion stablecoin market — just not as soon as it once thought. Global head of digital assets research Geoffrey Kendrick pushed the bank’s headline forecast from 2028 to 2030 after supply stalled around $309 billion, while onchain transfer activity kept climbing.

Flat supply, busy rails

Kendrick told The Block that stablecoin market cap has hovered between $300 billion and $320 billion for about a year. He frames the pause as cyclical — tied to softer crypto markets — not a structural dead end. Past flat stretches, he notes, often preceded fresh supply growth once risk appetite returned.

Usage tells a different story:

• Average monthly transfer value is nearly $10 trillion so far in 2026, up from about $4 trillion in 2025.
• A raw onchain monthly peak hit $19 trillion in May, according to the bank.
• Average monthly velocity roughly doubled to about 30× from 15× last year.
• USDT velocity stays near 7× (emerging-market savings), while USDC jumped toward 80× from about 45× (payments and early AI-agent flows).

Four markets, one yield fight

Kendrick splits the space into savings (USDT-heavy emerging markets), developed-market payments (USDC-led), crypto trading (USDC and Ethena’s USDe), and a small AI-agent payments niche (again USDC). The fiercest contest, he argues, will be TradFi-style payments in developed markets — with challengers such as USDG-style networks, M^0 infrastructure and multi-bank shared-issuance models competing over who captures reserve yield.

Regulation as the swing factor

The bank still sees $2 trillion as reachable, but warns that how countries copy — or diverge from — the US GENIUS Act (rules due to take fuller effect in January 2027) could reshape competition, especially for USDT’s emerging-market role. Forecasts are scenarios, not promises: supply can stay range-bound longer if crypto volumes stay soft or if licensing squeezes non-bank issuers.