TL;DR: Stablecoins are gaining momentum as adoption expands beyond crypto trading, but broader use will depend on education, trust, and practical payment applications. Their ability to support fast, automated transactions also positions stablecoins for a growing machine-to-machine payment economy.
Key Takeaways:
Stablecoins are gaining greater awareness, but global adoption will require better education, greater confidence that transfers will reach their intended destinations, plus a whole lot of robots.
The latest Global Crypto Adoption Index from blockchain analysts Chainalysis says the digital asset economy weathered this year’s bear market far better than expected. While total digital asset market cap plunged 50%, crypto ‘economic activity’ (service inflows, domestic peer-to-peer activity, cross-border transfers, etc.) totaled US$9.4 trillion in the 12 months ending June 30, down only 1.6% year-on-year.
The conservative estimate for cross-border stablecoin flows during this period is $220.3 billion, a 77.5% rise from the previous period. And that pace is accelerating, as cross-border flows in June hit $24 billion, more than twice the $11 billion moved in January 2025.
Chainalysis says it only counted transfers where it could attribute both ends of a transfer to a country, meaning the actual transfer volume is “likely much higher.”
The report says the average cross-border transfer was ~$3,000, “far too small to be institutional,” and suggests “everyday use cases,” including remittances, individuals paying suppliers, or consumers converting unstable local fiat currency to dollar-backed tokens to preserve value.
These transfers occur across ‘corridors’ (origins and endpoints), with the top quartile of these corridors growing 70.8% year-on-year and accounting for 96.1% of cross-border stablecoin value. But the bottom three-quartiles are by no means standing still, rising from $260 million in the previous period to $8.66 billion in the most recent period. That’s a 59,746% year-on-year rise.
In terms of domestic peer-to-peer (P2P) activity, stablecoin transfers weathered the bear market far better than inflows to services involving more volatile assets. Overall domestic P2P activity across all digital assets was down nearly one-fifth year-on-year, but stablecoins’ slice of this overall pie shot up 377.7%, to the point that stablecoins now represent 96% of P2P transfers.
The significant decline in speculative crypto token prices from September 2025 to June 2026 nearly halved the total dollar value held in digital wallets and on platforms. But stablecoin balances varied only slightly, in a range of $98 billion to $109 billion, with the result that stablecoins’ share of overall balances nearly doubled to 22.5%.
The report notes that similar rises have occurred in previous bear markets, including the 2022 ‘crypto winter’ that briefly pushed stablecoins to more than 25% of the overall balance.
According to Chainalysis’ upcoming 2026 Geography of Crypto Report, Nigeria ranked #1 in cross-border flows, followed by Brazil, South Africa, Japan, and Mexico. Nigeria also scored highest on the P2P economy chart, followed by China, Brazil, South Africa, and Thailand. Brazil ranked tops in the overall adoption index, followed by the U.S., Nigeria, Japan, and South Korea.
No trust, no stablecoin adoption
A similar cross-border checkup was just released by credit card giant Visa (NASDAQ: V). The Money Travels: 2026 Digital Remittances Adoption Report found that online banking and mobile wallets are the leading transfer channels with a 53% slice of U.S. remitters. But with fraud on the rise, trust that the funds will get where they’re supposed to go is proving key to adoption.
Once users are educated on how stablecoins work, nearly half (45%) of U.S. remitters said they’d be willing to use the technology, up from 36% in Visa’s previous report. This number is even higher across Latin America (74%) and India (80%).
But users qualified their enthusiasm by saying stablecoin transfers were more attractive when offered through existing financial providers that guaranteed “bank-level fraud protection and deposit insurance.” Strong majorities in Japan (68%), Singapore (57%), and Australia (57%) would even tolerate a 24-hour delay in transmission if it meant enhanced fraud protection.
Stablecoin awareness varies widely across regions, while understanding often ranks lower than awareness. In India, 66% of remitters have heard of stablecoins, but only 45% understood that the tokens have fixed values, while 33% believed stablecoin values fluctuate.
Faith in stablecoins is similarly varied, with 61% of Indian consumers trusting stablecoin transfers to reach their intended destination, compared to just 21% in Japan.
Among the highest stablecoin awareness scores came from the Middle East, with UAE and Saudi consumers scoring 82% and 73%, respectively. But actual stablecoin usage remains small among both UAE (10%) and Saudi Arabia (6%) remitters.
Here again, these numbers soar once users are educated about the tech, and would rise even higher if trusted financial providers offered stablecoin services. Fraud is the top concern among Saudi consumers when discussing stablecoin transfers, followed by AI-enabled scams and privacy and security risks.
In Europe, awareness of stablecoins varies widely from country to country. Spain boasts a 57% awareness score, compared with only about one-third of consumers in France, Italy, and the U.K. Adoption intent is similarly scattered, from 14% in Poland to 26% in Spain. Here too, fraud/scams tops users’ concerns re stablecoin transfers, but willingness to use stablecoins rises from 19% to 44% when fraud protection is guaranteed.
Latin America is the only region where the number of consumers receiving money from abroad (29-32%) exceeds outflows (14-23%), with recipients in Brazil and Mexico outnumbering senders by a ~2:1 ratio. Consumers in Peru (71%), Brazil (68%), and Mexico (66%) send or receive funds internationally multiple times per year.
Latin American markets showed one of the largest increases in stablecoin adoption willingness once protections against fraud and financial loss are promised, the figure more than doubling from an average 34% to 74%.
Consumers in the U.S. (45%) are far more willing than their Canadian counterparts (25%) to adopt stablecoins if made available via a trusted institution, despite 36% of U.S. remitters having encountered a scam compared to just 21% of Canadians who’d experienced the same. There’s a smaller gap in current stablecoin awareness, with 56% of Americans and 62% of Canadians having no knowledge of the technology.
Perhaps self-servingly, Visa says its findings suggest stablecoin adoption will rely on “trusted financial institutions” and will be “driven by providers’ ability to deliver secure, transparent and trusted payment experiences rather than technological innovation alone.”
Visa isn’t a newcomer to stablecoins, as its network has over 160 stablecoin-linked card programs, and the company began beta-testing its Visa Stablecoin Platform in July to enable other institutions to hop aboard this fast-moving train.
Rise of the stablecoin-friendly machines
Clearly, a new school year has begun, because everybody’s getting their homework in on time. Our final report comes from Wall Street fixtures BlackRock (NASDAQ: BLK), who’ve weighed in on The Machine-Native Economy: How digital assets connect intelligence, commerce, and compute.
Again, for our purposes, we’ll focus on the report’s stablecoin aspects, including the claim that “agentic commerce requires machine-native payment rails.” These rails will require “machine-native instruments for payment and settlement,” boosting the need for stablecoins, blockchain-native tokens, and “other on-chain assets.” However, stablecoins “are likely to lead transactional use.”
The report notes that existing fiat rails like the Automated Clearing House (ACH) and card networks already “support substantial automation,” but they’re “less suited to always-on, very low-value transactions requiring programmable execution.”
The report singles out agentic protocols such as x402, which began life as a Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) project, and ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol), a joint effort by OpenAI and payment processor Stripe, for creating transaction and settlement layers for more complex agentic workflows.
x402 is emerging as “one potential standard for high-velocity M2M [machine-to-machine] transactions … providing 24/7, near-real-time, verifiable settlement” and supporting “high-frequency, low-denomination transactions without human intervention.”
Other emerging protocols that connect agentic transactions to existing payment rails include the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP), a product of Stripe and its in-house stablecoin network, Tempo. Visa’s Trusted Agents Protocol (TAP) allows merchants to verify trusted agents, while the Agents Payment Protocol (AP2) launched by Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) provides evidence of user authorization via cryptographic mandates and audit trails. (N.B. This is not the Agent Payments Protocol announced by the OKX exchange this spring.)
Then there’s Google’s Agent2Agent (A2A) and the Model Context Protocol (MCP) introduced by Anthropic, both of which are enabling agents to engage in cross-platform communication and coordination.
The report notes that as the volume of agentic transactions increases, so will demand for blockspace and transaction validators. “The extent of value capture will depend on each network’s fee, staking, and gas-sponsorship design.” The report references USDC stablecoin issuer Circle (NASDAQ: CRCL) and its new Arc network, which uses USDC for both settlement and transaction fees.
All of these factors combine to “position AI as a structural catalyst for digital asset adoption and digital assets as a potential facilitator of the AI economy: AI interprets information and directs action, while blockchains provide machine-readable assets and programmable settlement.”
FAQS:
What are stablecoins being used for?
Stablecoins are increasingly being used for cross-border payments, remittances, peer-to-peer transfers, and preserving value against unstable local currencies. They are also being explored for machine-to-machine payments and AI agent transactions because they can support fast, automated and programmable transfers.
How much did cross-border stablecoin flows grow?
Cross-border stablecoin flows reached an estimated $220.3 billion in the latest period, up 77.5% year over year. Monthly flows also increased from $11 billion in January 2025 to $24 billion in June 2026, showing that stablecoin use for international transfers is expanding.
Why do people not trust stablecoins yet?
Trust remains a major barrier because users worry about fraud, scams, security, and whether their money will reach the intended recipient. Visa’s research found that willingness to use stablecoins increases when transfers are offered through trusted financial providers.
How many Americans know about stablecoins?
Stablecoin awareness remains relatively low in the U.S. Visa found that 56% of American remitters had no knowledge of stablecoins. However, 45% said they would be willing to use stablecoins once they understood how they work, showing that education could influence adoption.
Which countries are leading in stablecoin cross-border flows?
Nigeria ranked first in cross-border crypto flows in Chainalysis’ 2026 Geography of Crypto Report, followed by Brazil, South Africa, Japan, and Mexico. Nigeria also ranked first for peer-to-peer activity, while Brazil ranked first in the overall crypto adoption index.
Can AI agents use stablecoins for payments?
Yes. BlackRock’s report identifies stablecoins as likely transactional instruments for machine-native economies, including AI agent payments.
Why are stablecoins useful for machine-to-machine payments?
Stablecoins can support always-on, low-value and high-frequency transactions without requiring a person to approve every payment. BlackRock identifies machine-to-machine payments as a potential use case, with protocols such as x402 designed to enable near-real-time and verifiable settlement.
Watch: CBDCs or Stablecoins? What the Industry Leaders Actually Think
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