Stablecoins now settle 81% of institutional crypto OTC trades

Stablecoins have become the default settlement layer for institutional over-the-counter crypto trading, accounting for 81% of all OTC volume in the first half of 2026, according to a new report from institutional trading infrastructure provider Finery Markets. That is up from 23% in 2023 and 75% a year earlier, and it lands at the same moment OTC desks became the only trading venue type still growing, even as centralised and decentralised exchanges shrank.

The finding sits at the centre of Stablecoins 2035, a report combining Finery Markets' own trading data with forward-looking essays from executives and researchers at GSR, Flow Traders, Keyrock, Dune, Fipto, StraitsX, Mercuryo, Fiat Republic, Chainberg, and Hercle.

Where is institutional crypto volume actually growing?

Only one place. OTC desks grew trading volume 76% year over year in H1 2026, while the top 20 centralised exchanges contracted 38% and the top 20 decentralised exchanges fell 13%, per data the report attributes to Finery Markets, The Block, and Dune. Total OTC volume nearly doubled, rising 94% year on year, with stablecoin transaction volume driving most of that gain.

The pattern reflects a structural shift rather than a cyclical one. Finery Markets, which operates a non-custodial electronic communication network for institutional digital-asset trading, has tracked stablecoins' OTC share climbing every year since it stood at under a quarter of trades in 2023. The firm reported an H1 2025 share of roughly 75% earlier; the 81% H1 2026 reading is a fresh all-time high.

For context on scale, the total stablecoin market sat between roughly $290 billion and $320 billion through the first half of 2026, depending on the tracker and capture date, with Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC together holding around 83% of supply. The market has broadly held above the $300 billion mark that the report references as a milestone.

Is the euro stablecoin closing the gap on the dollar?

Not in any way that threatens dollar primacy. USD-denominated tokens accounted for 99.87% of total OTC stablecoin volume in H1 2026, barely changed from 99.99% a year earlier. Euro-pegged stablecoins did grow spot OTC trading volume 32-fold year on year, but from a base so small that the shift is immaterial to overall dollar dominance.

Michael Lie, Global Head of Digital Assets at Flow Traders, frames the euro-versus-dollar framing itself as misplaced. In his view, dollar stablecoins win not because the currency is intrinsically superior but because the dollar ecosystem is more liquid, more integrated, and easier to scale, sitting on top of deep capital markets and established institutional workflows. Liquidity, he argues, cannot be manufactured on demand by market makers; it emerges from two-way natural flow, efficient hedging, and continuous cross-venue activity. His prescription for non-dollar issuers is not to replicate dollar dominance but to become indispensable in narrower use cases: regulated settlement, tokenised securities, treasury workflows, and institutional collateral.

That view is echoed in the report's data on non-dollar transfers. Setting Circle's euro token aside, the report finds roughly 80% of non-dollar stablecoin activity is ordinary transfers, with volumes that dip on weekends, the signature of business payments rather than speculative trading. Named local-currency examples include Société Générale's EURCV passing $2 billion in monthly transfer volume within a year, Japan's JPYC climbing from $2 million to $67 million a month after relaunching under the country's Payment Services Act, and Brazil's BRLA growing 22-fold on the PIX instant-payment network.

Why are emerging markets driving stablecoin adoption?

Because dollar stablecoins solve a problem local financial systems cannot. GSR research analysts Carlos Guzman and Slater Santer argue that emerging-market savers reach for dollar tokens to buy properties their own systems lack: a stable store of value, money that resists inflation or seizure, and a link to the global economy.

The report cites a Goldman Sachs estimate that roughly two-thirds of stablecoin supply is held in emerging markets, and points to Argentina, where stablecoins made up about 62% of all crypto activity in 2024 during a period of triple-digit inflation, per Chainalysis. A separate survey of crypto users across five emerging economies, conducted by Castle Island Ventures, Brevan Howard Digital, and Artemis, found 47% cited saving in dollars as a reason to use stablecoins. Editorially it is worth noting that saving in dollars ranked as the second most-cited use case in that survey, behind accessing crypto, rather than the single dominant motivation; the five countries studied were Brazil, Nigeria, Turkey, Indonesia, and India.

The GSR analysts extend the savings thesis into a broader capability: the ability to hold, move, hedge, borrow against, and earn on almost any asset from anywhere. They point to tokenised US Treasuries as the next instrument following stablecoins onchain. Independent trackers put tokenised Treasuries at roughly $13 billion in mid-2026, up sharply over twelve months, and tokenised equities at around $1.5 billion, still small but growing fast. The report's own figure of $15 billion for tokenised Treasuries runs slightly ahead of consensus tracker data from rwa.xyz and CoinGecko, which cluster nearer $13 billion.

Where do stablecoins earn their institutional keep?

In the treasury function, not the trading desk. Patrick Mollard, CEO and co-founder of Fipto, argues that the daily work of moving, settling, and reconciling corporate money is where stablecoin advantages map onto what treasurers demand: control, visibility, speed, and cost. Fipto has routed live stablecoin payment flows into the Kyriba Treasury Management System, with enterprises Ledger and Mantu running them in production. On a Europe-to-Colombia corridor, the report says Mantu cut all-in transfer costs to roughly 1%, against 3% to 5% through correspondent banking, with settlement compressed from two-to-five business days to minutes.

The institutional use case is reinforced by developments outside the report. Visa disclosed in April 2026 that its stablecoin settlement pilot had reached a $7 billion annualised run rate across nine blockchains, up 50% quarter over quarter, evidence that settlement volume is scaling at the network level, not just among crypto-native desks.

What does the bank-issued stablecoin wave look like?

Defensive, and increasingly regulated. Dune's Arnaud Simeray describes three distinct stablecoin markets: real-world payments split by geography, DeFi composability, and a long tail of branded coins that banks and fintechs issue mainly to keep existing customers inside their own products. The clearest example is SoFi, which the report cites as the first US national bank to offer a retail stablecoin.

That claim checks out and has moved on since the report's data was gathered. SoFi launched SoFiUSD to its members on Ethereum and Solana, redeemable 1:1 through SoFi Bank under its national bank charter, making it the first stablecoin issued by a US national bank offered directly through a consumer banking app. SoFi reports nearly 15 million members, marginally above the 14.7 million the report cites. The rollout arrives against the backdrop of the GENIUS Act, the US federal payment-stablecoin framework enacted in July 2025, under which the FDIC and OCC have been issuing implementing rules through 2026.

Why This Matters to FinanceX Readers

For institutional desks, treasurers, and payment providers, the signal is that stablecoin settlement has crossed from experiment to default in the venues that matter most to professional flow. OTC is now the only growing trading segment, and it runs on stablecoins. The competitive question is no longer whether to support stablecoin settlement but which corridors, currencies, and treasury systems to prioritise, and whether to build proprietary rails or plug into existing ones. Dollar dominance in settlement looks entrenched for the near term, but the fastest growth in real-world payment usage is happening in local-currency corridors and emerging markets, where the economics are most compelling.

Firms weighing a proprietary token should note the strategic logic the report surfaces: issuing your own dollar removes yield, reserve-composition, and redemption-fee constraints that come with building on someone else's stablecoin, which is why banks and fintechs with real balances are increasingly launching their own.