Stablecoin circulation lags at $300b as banks focus on tokenised deposits

Banks are instead building tokenised deposit infrastructures, whose flows have reached over $4t annually.

Stablecoin adoption is not as advanced as estimated, with total circulation sitting at little more than $300b as of early 2026—still a far cry from the multi-trillions forecasted for 2030, according to McKinsey & Company.

A 2023 study by Citi forecasted that stablecoin adoption will be at $4t by 2030. Media coverage of stablecoins and unicorn valuations has created a sense of urgency amongst corporate and bank leaders out of fear that they’d miss out, the management consulting firm said in an article on 21 May 2026.

Current market data shows that the majority of the $300b of stablecoins in circulation has remained relatively unchanged over the past six months.

In 2025, the stablecoin market saw $400b in organic payment activity, according to data from Artemis Analytics. This volume is minute when compared to the quadrillion dollars that move annually through global payment systems, McKinsey said.

Majority of the stablecoins are also issued by two companies, Circle and Tether.

“This leveling off of stablecoin circulation challenges the assumption that stablecoins are the default settlement asset and that other tokenized values grow in lockstep with it,” McKinsey wrote in the report.

Instead, real movement is happening on tokenised deposit infrastructures, based on McKinsey’s report.

“These flows, estimated at more than $4 trillion annually, are an order of magnitude larger than stablecoins and are embedded directly into existing institutional payment, liquidity, and treasury workflows,” the report said.

More than a dozen institutions, including Citibank and BNY, have publicly disclosed live deployments or pilots, each on their own proprietary platforms, it added.

JP Morgan’s Kinexys is estimated to facilitate over $1t in tokenised deposit transfers annually.

Meanwhile, tokenised central bank money remains largely experimental, as early projects in Canada, Frances, Singapore, and Switzerland raise questions on monetary sovereignty and legal authority and may require changes to legislation and regulation.

“For now, even optimists predict that it could be several years before central bank digital currencies become ubiquitous,” McKinsey wrote.

However, they remain a fundamental necessity for true finality in international settlement.