USDt hit many new highs in Q4 2025.
- Market capitalization is $187.3 billion
- Number of users increased by more than 30 million for 8 consecutive quarters
- Largest quarterly increase in on-chain wallets holding USDt
- Number of monthly active on-chain users at record high level
- Highest number of on-chain transfers and transfer amounts ever
At the same time, the crypto liquidation cascade on October 10, 2025 means that the stablecoin ecosystem is not growing as fast as it used to. The market capitalization of cryptocurrencies declined by more than a third between October 10, 2025 and February 1, 2026, but USDt has grown by 3.5% since then, while the second and third-ranked stablecoins have declined by 2.6% and 57%, respectively.
USDt’s continued growth is due to its diverse use cases beyond the cryptocurrency market, and data clearly shows that users prefer USDt as a stablecoin for both storing and trading wealth.
These insights are primarily based on Tether analysis of blockchain data, also known as on-chain data. On-chain data for 75 stablecoins across 15 blockchains is provided by Chainaracy and Artemis. For continued insights on USDt, visit usdt.network.
Market capitalization
USDt market capitalization increased by $12.4 billion to $187.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025, with a month-on-month growth rate of 4.9% in October, although the growth rate slowed due to the October 10 crypto liquidation cascade.
reserves
Tether’s total reserves increased by $11.7 billion in the fourth quarter to $192.9 billion, bringing its net equity (assets greater than debt) to $6.3 billion. Total reserves include 96,184 Bitcoins, an increase of 9,850 Bitcoins in the fourth quarter, and 127.5 tonnes of gold, an increase of 21.9 tonnes in the fourth quarter.
Tether’s total exposure to U.S. Treasuries increased by $6.5 billion in the fourth quarter to $141.6 billion, making Tether the 18th largest holder of U.S. Treasuries, ahead of Saudi Arabia and Germany.
Tether added a total of $28.2 billion in U.S. Treasuries in 2025, making it the seventh largest purchaser of U.S. Treasuries compared to other countries in the past 12 months, and more than Taiwan and South Korea.
Total number of users
The total estimated number of USDt users increased by 35.2 million to 534.5 million in Q4 2025, making Q4 the eighth consecutive quarter of an increase of more than 30 million users. This estimate includes both on-chain wallet users (those who have ever received USDt and held it for at least 24 hours) and an estimate of users who have received USDt on centralized services such as exchanges.
on-chain holder
The number of USDt on-chain holders increased by 14.7 million in the fourth quarter to 139.1 million, the largest quarterly increase ever. Wallets holding USDt accounted for 70.7% of all wallets holding stablecoins. In addition to users holding USDt in on-chain wallets, it is estimated that over 100 million users also hold USDt within centralized services such as exchanges.
The composition of USDt on-chain holders remained fairly constant, with 100% savers (wallets holding all of the USDt received) 30.8% of holders, savers (wallets holding more than 2/3 of received USDt) 6.7% of holders, and senders (wallets holding an average of less than 2/3 of received USDt) 6.7%. 62.6% of holders. Compared to all other stablecoins, USDt wallets have a higher percentage of savers or 100% savers (37.5% vs. 30%), with 75.1% of stablecoin saver wallets choosing USDt, indicating that USDt remains the preferred stablecoin as a store of wealth.
On-chain active users
Monthly active on-chain users (those wallets that receive USDt at least once within a 30-day rolling window) averaged a record 24.8 million in the quarter, with the level of USDt activity at an all-time high. This accounts for 68.4% of the stablecoin’s total monthly active users.
Balance held by user type
At the end of the fourth quarter, the largest share of USDt, 36%, was held in centralized exchanges (CEXs), an increase of 2.8 percentage points from the end of the third quarter. This was partly due to a decrease in USDt held in decentralized exchanges (DEX) and decentralized finance (DeFi) following the October 10 crypto liquidation cascade, with USDt held in DEXs and DeFi decreasing by $3 billion (2 percentage points) in the fourth quarter to $7.1 billion (3.8% share of USDt).
The next largest share of USDt, 33%, is held by savers, of which 17.4% is held by 100% savers and 15.6% by other savers. Savers added $2.9 billion of USDt to their holdings in the fourth quarter, bringing the total to $62.1 billion at the end of the quarter. USDt, as mentioned above, attracts not only the most savers, but also the largest amount of USD value, with 59.9% of the total value stored in stablecoins, and 77.3% excluding wallets (often cold wallets on exchanges) that each hold more than $10 million.
Senders held the third-largest share of USDt, at 26.5% at the end of the fourth quarter. This share remained relatively constant between Q3 and Q4, with senders adding $2.2 billion USDt to their holdings in Q4. This reflects increased liquidity in USDt trading use cases.
Note that the total balance shown here is slightly larger than the market cap, as the balance includes USDt held in Tether Treasuries but not yet issued, and the market cap only includes USDt in net circulation.
USD value transferred on-chain
The USD value in USDt units transferred quarterly on-chain increased by $248.6 billion to $4.4 trillion in the fourth quarter, the highest level ever. Of the quarter’s total of $4.4 trillion, $2.8 trillion (63.6%) were transactions where USDt was the only asset transferred, and $1.6 trillion (36.4%) were transactions where multiple assets were transferred (usually DeFi swaps). USDt accounted for 65.9% of the value of single-asset transactions involving stablecoins and 34.6% of the value of multi-asset transactions involving stablecoins. This suggests that while USDt remains the preferred stablecoin for value transfer, other stablecoins are often commonly used to exchange USDt value.
Number of on-chain transfers
Quarterly on-chain transfers (USDt) increased by 313.1 million in the fourth quarter to an all-time high of 2.2 billion. Of the 2.2 billion total for the quarter, 1.94 billion (88.2%) were transfers of less than $1,000 each, 256 million (11.6%) were transfers between $1,000 and $100,000 each, and 4.6 million (0.2%) were transfers greater than $100,000 each.
speed
USDt velocity (percentage of balances transferred daily) was 18.2% at the end of the fourth quarter on a 7-day moving average basis. This is down from a peak of 51.8% on November 5th, caused by a surge in DeFi activity, and similar to levels last seen before Q2 2025, when Bitcoin price levels were similar. USDt’s average velocity for the quarter was 28%, significantly lower than the 151% velocity of the next largest stablecoin by market capitalization. The relatively slow speed of USDt suggests that it has a more stable user base and has a variety of use cases, as explained below.
The speed of USDt will obviously vary depending on your use case. Users who hold USDt to save typically have lower velocities because they hold rather than send. 100% Saber’s velocity is naturally zero, but Saber’s daily velocity in 2025 was 4%. On-chain velocity for centralized exchanges is also low, with a daily velocity of 11% in 2025. This is because users hold USDt as savings on both exchanges and trades, but the trading volumes, which we will discuss in the next section, are recorded on a centralized order book rather than on the blockchain. Therefore, the USDt transferred from a centralized exchange via the blockchain is a small amount compared to the amount of USDt held there.
Faster use cases for USDt are sender wallets that send USDt for various reasons such as payments, remittances, moving USDt between exchanges (51% speed per day in 2025), and DEX and DeFi with 111% speed per day in 2025. Since DEX transactions are recorded on the blockchain and users may make multiple transactions per day, the speeds are typically very high, resulting in speeds of 111% in 2025. 100%.
USDt has 67% of its market capitalization in slow use cases and 33% in fast use cases. This combination provides both stability from slow use cases and fluidity from fast use cases.
spot market
Spot market trading volume of USDt on centralized exchanges in the fourth quarter was $3.2 trillion, of which 96.5% was USDt as a quoted asset and the rest was USDt as other quoted asset. This was a 5.9% decrease compared to the third quarter due to lower trading volumes following the October 10 crypto liquidation cascade. However, USDt increased its overall share of spot market volume by 1.5 percentage points to 61.5%, as volumes for all other assets decreased by 11.5% compared to Q3. There were 14.1 billion spot trades in USDt in the fourth quarter, accounting for 80% of all spot trades in the quarter.
conclusion
USDt recorded many new highs in Q4 2025, but growth slowed after the crypto liquidation cascade on October 10, 2025. However, data shows that the crypto market is not the only driver of USDt growth. Users significantly prefer saving in USDt compared to other stablecoins (USDt is 75% of stablecoin saver wallets and 77% of USD value stored in wallets under $10 million). This provides a steady, low-velocity source of demand.
USDt also leads in the use case for faster means of exchange, with USDt accounting for 65.9% of the value of single-asset trades including stablecoins, but only 34.6% of the value of multi-asset trades including stablecoins. This suggests that while USDt remains the preferred stablecoin for value transfer, other stablecoins are often commonly used to exchange USDt value. These faster USDt use cases provide the liquidity that ensures USDt is widely available and accepted.
For continued insights on USDt, visit usdt.network.
philip gladwell
Vice President of Economics, Tether
