USDT 2.5× bigger; USDC circulates about seven times more

Tether’s USDT had roughly $183 billion in market capitalization at the end of the period, compared with about $72 billion for Circle’s USDC. Visa’s Onchain Analytics dashboard, built with blockchain-data firm Allium Labs, shows USDC represented roughly 70% of adjusted stablecoin transaction volume in the first half of 2026, while USDT accounted for roughly 25%.

Visa’s adjusted metric removes bot activity, market-maker rebalancing, exchange treasury transfers and looping smart-contract flows to focus on transfers that represent economic payments. Visa estimates organic activity is about a quarter to a third of raw on-chain volume. The dashboard recorded a June 2026 adjusted-volume high of $1.79 trillion, a 63% increase from May, and adjusted volume for the first half of 2026 totaled $8.82 trillion.

Applying Visa’s H1 share splits to current circulating supply produces implied adjusted H1 volumes of roughly $6.2 trillion for USDC and $2.2 trillion for USDT. Dividing adjusted H1 volume by circulating supply gives turnover ratios of about 86 times for USDC and 12 times for USDT. By that measure, a dollar of USDC moved about seven times more often than a dollar of USDT in H1 2026.

On-chain distributions show different user patterns. Estimates place roughly two-thirds of global stablecoin supply in emerging-market wallets, used for dollar hedging and related stores of value. Tron carries about $90 billion in stablecoins, with roughly $85 billion of that denominated in USDT, representing more than 97% of stablecoin liquidity on that chain.

USDC is available natively on more than 35 blockchains and has attracted bank support. Standard Chartered and BNY have added USDC-linked services for client settlement. Visa has piloted settlement of VisaNet obligations in USDC over Solana through partner banks Cross River and Lead Bank; the pilot reached about $7 billion annualized by April 2026.

Circle reported $21.5 trillion in on-chain USDC volume in Q1 2026 on an unadjusted basis, with end-of-quarter circulation of $77 billion. Circle has set a supply target of $150 billion for H2 2026, up from about $112 billion earlier in the year.

Adjusted-volume totals vary by vendor. Visa’s adjusted trailing-12-month figure is about $10.2 trillion, while an alternative methodology on the same chains produces a larger figure near $26 trillion. Visa’s commercial role in USDC settlement is a disclosed relationship tied to the data behind the dashboard.

Open questions include whether June’s month-on-month jump in adjusted volume will continue in subsequent months and where USDT’s market share will stabilize after declining from roughly 90% in 2020 to about 25% in H1 2026. Changes in supply and in filtering methodologies are factors that will affect future reported volumes.