Standard Chartered Revises Stablecoin Market Outlook
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Written by:
- Sam Bourgi, staff writer
- Edited by: Robert Lakin, staff editor
Standard Chartered pushes $2T stablecoin forecast to 2030 as transaction volumes grow
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Published: Oct 14, 2026
The bank identified four distinct stablecoin markets, with USDC leading payments and AI transactions as competition intensifies over reserve yields.
Standard Chartered predicts stablecoin market capitalization will reach $2 trillion by 2030, a two-year delay from their previous forecast, due to the market's recent plateau at around $309 billion this year.
Geoffrey Kendrick, StanChart’s head of digital assets research, attributes this growth to existing stablecoins changing hands more frequently, rather than new supply, as their use cases expand.
Kendrick categorized the stablecoin markets into four distinct groups:
- Emerging-market savings: Tether’s USDt (USDT)
- Developed-market payments: Circle’s USDC (USDC)
- Crypto trading: USDC and Ethena’s USDe
- AI agent transactions: USDC
The report highlights that the most competitive sector will be developed market payments, with alternatives to existing payment infrastructure, like USDG, M^0, and multibank stablecoin networks, emerging.
The bank suggests that the division of yield generated by stablecoin reserves among issuers and payment networks will be a key factor in determining market share winners.
Source: Standard Chartered
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- US regulatory and accounting changes could shape stablecoin use