USDC年化周转率741倍，为USDT十倍

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Beneath the Trillions: What’s Driving USDC and USDT Transfer Volume?

By: Tanay Ved, Senior Research Associate

Key Takeaways:

• Each dollar of USDC supply turns over 741x on an annualized basis, ten times USDT’s 74x, despite USDT having a market cap more than $100 billion larger.
• USDC's high turnover is driven by DeFi infrastructure that varies by chain, liquidity-pool rebalancing on Base, flashloan arbitrage on Ethereum, while USDT on Tron is tied more to exchange flows.
• Stablecoin transfer volume today is largely driven by the plumbing of crypto markets, including liquidity management and exchange settlement, while payments and commercial use cases continue to develop.

Introduction

Stablecoins have evolved beyond trading instruments into the backbone of onchain liquidity, offering a global, 24/7 means to store, transfer, and settle value on blockchains. Since 2025, onchain stablecoin settlement has decoupled from crypto trading volumes. Adjusted onchain transfer volume has exceeded $250B per day at points this year, while exchange trading volume has fallen to roughly $18B per day.

In 2026 so far, stablecoins have settled $41.7T in adjusted transfer volume. Despite the recent deceleration in stablecoin supply, each dollar of stablecoin supply is turning over more frequently than in prior years. This reflects a broadening range of uses, from exchange liquidity management and DeFi collateral movement to emerging consumer and B2B payment flows.

In this issue of State of the Network, we look beneath the trillions in stablecoin transfer volume to examine USDC and USDT’s velocity, and trace what’s driving record volumes across their largest networks. Building on our previous analysis, “The Curious Case of USDC on Base,” which found that roughly 50% of USDC’s transfer volume on the Base L2 traces to DeFi infrastructure (DEX liquidity provision and flashloan activity), we conduct a bottoms-up analysis of USDC and USDT transfer volume across Ethereum, Base, and Tron.

Supply vs Velocity: Comparing Stablecoin Turnover

While supply measures the size of a stablecoin’s monetary base, velocity tells you how frequently that supply moves onchain. Together, they provide a view of whether a stablecoin is functioning as an active asset or sitting idle as a store of value. This very distinction has been central to the CLARITY Act, which permits rewards tied to genuine transactional activity while discouraging yield simply for holding a balance.

By that measure, USDC looks like the clear winner. The chart below compares stablecoins across these two dimensions in 2026 so far: supply and velocity. USDC’s annualized (adjusted supply) velocity of 741x is ten times higher than USDT’s 74x, despite USDT commanding a market cap over $100B larger. This indicates that, relative to circulating supply, USDC is transferred far more frequently than USDT.

Source: Talos Network Data Pro

The GENIUS Act’s passage in 2025 gave USDC a regulatory tailwind reinforcing its network effects in onshore U.S.regulated markets, decentralized finance (DeFi), and institutional settlement. USDT’s dominance by contrast is a result of its first mover advantage, offshore emerging-markets usage, and affinity to Tron, where dollar access and remittance flows matter more.

Circle’s USDC overtook Tether’s USDT in adjusted transfer volume in 2024, with the lead only widening this year. As of August 2026, USDC has settled $32T in transfer volume, 77% of the stablecoin market while USDT settled $8T (19%). While USDC continues to lead, the gap has narrowed with USDC now back to under $100B in daily transfer volume.

Source: Talos Network Data Pro

According to Circle’s Q2 2026 Earnings, USDC’s onchain transaction volume grew 151% YoY in Q2 2026 to $14.8T, while circulating supply grew at a much slower rate. Reserve income, rather than transaction activity, still made up roughly 95% of that revenue. Circle’s own Layer-1 blockchain, Arc, is one of its lanes to transaction-based revenue, which makes the drivers of USDC’s transaction volume an important question.

In the sections below, we break down transaction volume across USDC (on Ethereum and Base) and USDT (on Ethereum and Tron), which covers the vast majority of all stablecoin transfer volume.

Decomposing USDC and USDT Transfer Volume

To find out what’s driving these astounding numbers, we took a bottoms-up approach building on our prior analysis of USDC on Base. For each stablecoin and chain, we identified the contracts most likely to generate mechanical volume: the primary lending markets used for flashloans, the largest liquidity pools on each chain’s dominant DEX, and known exchange wallets. Together, these map to three categories: flashloans, DEX liquidity provision, and exchange (CEX) flows.

We then measured the share of each chain’s total raw transfer volume that flowed through those categories, using Talos’ unadjusted transfer volume metric. The tagged categories should be viewed as lower-bound estimates with the remainder including activity that was not isolated, including potential payments, bridging, treasury movements, and other forms of settlement.

USDC on Base

Coinbase’s L2 Base accounted for the majority of USDC transfer volume in 2026. Activity was highly concentrated: more than 90% of Base USDC volume traced to just three contracts. DEX liquidity provision on Aerodrome accounted for the largest share of volume over the full period, while flashloan activity through Morpho became more prominent later in the year. A single day in June saw flashloan volume exceed $500B. Base’s low fees and deep USDC liquidity make high-frequency, automated activity economical at scale.

• Flashloans, 23%: bots borrowing and repaying uncollateralized loans within a single transaction, through Morpho’s singleton contract (which every isolated lending market routes through), to capture arbitrage opportunities.
• DEX liquidity provision, 69%: automated strategies continuously rebalancing liquidity in two Aerodrome pools as prices shift, generating enormous gross volume while barely shifting net capital or the position’s overall size.
• Residual, ~8% : Activity outside the tagged flashloan and liquidity-pool contracts.

Source: Talos CM ATLAS

USDC on Ethereum

USDC activity on Ethereum is even more concentrated in flashloans, which account for 65% of transfer volume, nearly three times their share on Base. Ethereum’s deep USDC liquidity and large lending markets make it a natural venue for large-scale flashloans and arbitrage, while higher fees limit the constant rebalancing activity seen on lower-cost chains such as Base.

• Flashloans, 65%
• DEX liquidity provision, 0.3%
• CEX flows, 2%
• Residual, ~33%

Source: Talos CM ATLAS

USDT on Ethereum

Flashloans also account for a significant share of USDT volume on Ethereum, though less than for USDC. CEX flows are more prominent, consistent with USDT's role in exchange-related liquidity and settlement. These are known deposit and withdrawal wallets belonging to centralized exchanges like Binance, OKX, and others, capturing both customer activity and internal transfers between an exchange's own hot and cold wallets.

• Flashloans 46%
• DEX liquidity provision, 0.3%: primarily through Uniswap V3’s USDT/WETH pool
• CEX flows, 9%: deposits and withdrawals across 30 centralized exchange (CEX) wallets
• Residual, ~45%

Source: Talos CM ATLAS

USDT on Tron