Stablecoin volumes may hit $719t by 2035 on wealth transfer and POS adoption

Up to $100t will be transferred to Gen Z and Millennials over the coming decades.

Stablecoin transaction volumes are expected to reach $719t by 2035, and as much as $1.5 quadrillion (q) if factoring in macro-catalysts, according to estimates by Chainalysis.

Stablecoins’ real economic activity reached $28t in 2025, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 133% since 2023, it said in a blog post published on 8 April 2026.

Two macro catalysts that can push volumes to the quadrillions is the ongoing wealth transfer from Boomers to Millennials and Gen Z, and the increasing acceptance of cryptocurrency in point-of-sales (POS) terminals.

An estimated $80t to $100t is expected to move over the coming decades from Boomers to Millennials and Gen Z. Nearly half of these younger generations have held or currently hold crypto, according to Chainalysis, citing a 2025 Gemini survey.

Meanwhile, as more merchants accept stablecoins, paying with crypto shifts from a deliberate choice to default payments infrastructure, Chainalysis said.

“The integration of stablecoins into merchant services represents the final stage of on-chain payment utility: a shift from specialized transfers to everyday commerce,” it wrote in the blog post.

If current trends in transaction count growth hold, on-chain stablecoin transactions could match Visa and Mastercard’s off-chain transactions sometime between 2031 and 2039, Chainalysis wrote.

“But given that adoption curves in payment networks are rarely linear, on-chain transaction counts could intersect or surpass legacy rails before the 2030s,” it added.