Ethereum Stablecoins Shatter Records: 12-Month Surge Peaks at 2025 Climax

Ethereum's stablecoin ecosystem just hit its all-time high—capping off a full year of relentless expansion.

The Unstoppable Climb

For twelve consecutive months, transaction volumes and adoption metrics on the network did nothing but go up. This wasn't a spike; it was a sustained march upward that finally peaked at the end of 2025, setting a new benchmark for activity.

What Drove the Frenzy?

Look past the raw numbers—this surge speaks to a deeper shift. Traders flocked to stablecoins for precision in volatile markets, while DeFi protocols locked and leveraged them into complex yield engines. It became the indispensable plumbing for a financial system rebuilding itself from the ground up, one smart contract at a time.

Traditional finance, with its legacy settlement rails, watched from the sidelines—probably still debating their internal blockchain task force's third PowerPoint presentation.

The peak is in, but the infrastructure now in place suggests this is less an endpoint and more a new foundation. The real activity is just beginning.

Stablecoins remained active even below market price records

Crypto valuations at the end of 2025 have deflated below their peak levels, while stablecoin users retained the high activity levels. Ethereum activity shows a structural shift in digital asset activity, independent of the BTC and ETH price cycle.  

Stablecoins have multiple use cases, including arbitrage, P2P movements, lending, and settlements between whales or even institutions. During previous cycles, spikes in stablecoin activity were short-lived, while the activity in 2025 remained at a high baseline, with sustained growth. 

Stablecoin transfers became one of the key avenues for positioning capital. The high activity may also signal repositioning, seeking out the best venues of liquidity. Stablecoins were used as lending collateral, DEX trading pairs, and other active allocations, instead of being used to park value. The availability of yield also greatly expanded stablecoin turnover. 

During past crypto cycles, high stablecoin activity signaled accumulation rather than distribution. Despite the slide of BTC from its highs, stablecoin activity showed the market was still searching for opportunities.

Ethereum becomes a high-value stablecoin hub

Ethereum became a hub for high-value transfers, with USDT and USDC among the top 5 smart contracts on the network. Stablecoins were also among the chief reasons for Ethereum’s recent transaction record, as Cryptopolitan reported. The top three stablecoins on Ethereum remain USDT, USDC, and DAI, the legacy stablecoin of the Sky ecosystem. 

USDT has a 54.77% dominance, with around 37% for USDC based on transaction levels. Both tokens expanded their transaction activity at a near-exponential rate in the last months of 2025. 

However, USDC is becoming the value leader, carrying higher volumes despite having lower activity. 

The prevalence of USDC transfers for high-value activities shows another shift in 2025. Over the past 12 months, USDC activity increased, as traders shifted to the fully regulated and accepted token. USDC can be used with no restrictions by US and European traders, while USDT retains its international role outside those markets.

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