Most stablecoin founders sit in offices in San Francisco, New York, or London. Most stablecoin volume does not flow through San Francisco, New York, or London.
That disconnect, between where stablecoins are created and where they’re actually moving money, has become one of the most telling data points in crypto right now. Ecosystem maps from firms like a16z show founder concentrations that look nothing like the heat maps of real transaction activity.
The numbers behind the mismatch
Real-world stablecoin payment volume hit roughly $400 billion in 2025. A full 60% of that came from business-to-business transactions, not retail speculation or DeFi yield farming.
Global fiat-backed stablecoin supply exceeded $273 billion by March 2026. For context, that figure was approximately $6.8 billion in March 2020. A 40x increase in six years.
