For years, stablecoins have been marketed as crypto’s potential bridge to normal, everyday payments — or at least what most people consider to be normal.
In 2025, they seemed to have made the jump from a promising prospect to a tool increasingly used by institutions, banks, and even previous crypto non-believers.
Total transaction volumes for stablecoins surged by 72% last year, reaching a massive $33tr (€28tr), according to data from Artemis Analytics.
Stablecoins are crypto assets designed to maintain a stable value by pegging their worth to a real-world asset such as the US dollar. Essentially, they represent a digital copy of a circulating currency.
Since cryptocurrencies are not typically controlled by regular banking institutions and their circulation is not regulated by the monetary policies of governments, monetary institutions were reluctant to use them in their transactions.
