Talos, the institutional digital asset trading platform, has published a bottom-up analysis of stablecoin transfer activity across Ethereum, Base and Tron, finding that USDC and USDT display markedly different velocity profiles despite both being classed as dollar-pegged stablecoins. The report, titled “Beneath the Trillions,” is the latest output from Talos’s CM ATLAS and Network Data Pro data products.
The headline figure is large: stablecoins have collectively settled $41.7 trillion in adjusted transfer volume in 2026 to date. USDC accounts for $32 trillion of that total, representing 77% of the market, compared with $8 trillion for USDT. The contrast is sharpest when normalised for supply. Each dollar of USDC supply turns over 741 times on an annualised basis, roughly ten times the 74x recorded for USDT, despite USDT carrying a market capitalisation more than $100 billion larger.
What is moving the numbers
The Talos analysis attributes USDC’s elevated velocity primarily to DeFi infrastructure rather than to payment or commercial activity. On Base, decentralised exchange liquidity provision accounts for 69% of USDC transfer volume, with flashloans contributing a further 23%. On Ethereum, flashloans alone represent 65% of USDC transfer volume, a figure that reflects how arbitrage and liquidity management strategies can generate high gross transfer counts without corresponding economic output in the traditional sense.
USDT on Tron shows a structurally different pattern. Flashloan and DEX activity is almost entirely absent, while exchange deposits and withdrawals are the largest identified category, accounting for 19% of transfer volume. That profile is consistent with Tron’s longstanding role as a low-cost settlement rail for centralised exchange flows, particularly in emerging markets.
Tanay Ved, senior research associate at Talos, noted the interpretive limits of headline transfer data: “Headline transfer volume should not yet be read as equivalent to consumer payments or real-world economic activity. Stablecoins are increasingly used as a settlement layer for digital asset markets, while payment, remittance, and B2B use cases are still developing alongside it.”
Regulatory and market context
The velocity gap between USDC and USDT has material implications beyond market microstructure. Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic are actively shaping the stablecoin framework. In the EU, the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation classifies stablecoins by issuance volume and systemic risk, with significant-volume tokens subject to tighter requirements around reserve composition and transaction limits. In the US, stablecoin legislation remains in progress, with draft bills in both chambers seeking to establish federal licensing requirements for issuers.
The Talos findings also matter for the broader narrative around stablecoins as a payments technology. Industry advocates frequently cite trillion-dollar transfer volumes when arguing that stablecoins have achieved payments-network scale. The Talos data complicates that framing: when the majority of USDC volume is flashloan-driven arbitrage on Ethereum and liquidity provision on Base, the comparison with Visa or SWIFT settled transaction volumes requires significant qualification.
Several large banks and payments processors have entered the stablecoin space, or signalled intent to do so, in part on the premise that commercial and cross-border payment demand will grow. The Talos analysis suggests that growth in payment and remittance use cases is real but remains a secondary driver relative to DeFi and exchange settlement at present. The velocity and composition metrics Talos tracks will become a key data series as institutional adoption broadens and regulators look for evidence that stablecoin volume reflects genuine economic activity rather than automated liquidity cycling.
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