USDT and USDC split the stablecoin market as MiCA euro tokens gain traction

Stablecoins are starting to behave less like one big market and more like a set of separate rails. Dune’s latest data shows Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC carving up different use cases, while MiCA-compliant euro stablecoins are growing fast enough to matter for anyone watching where settlement liquidity is moving.

1. USDT has become crypto’s main payments stablecoin, while USDC has settled into a different job: DeFi and onchain trading. According to Dune, USDT settled $95 billion in identified commercial payments in the first half of 2026 and continues to dominate business-to-business transfers.
2. USDC is now driving onchain trading and DeFi activity, with trillions of dollars in monthly transfer volume across Base and Ethereum. The point is not that one token “won” and the other “lost”; it is that the two largest stablecoins are now embedded in different network effects, which makes direct competition less relevant than infrastructure fit.
3. The chain split matters too. Dune’s data shows USDT supply divided almost evenly between Tron and Ethereum, while USDC remains highly active on Ethereum. For PSPs and platforms routing stablecoin flows, that usually means different liquidity pools, different counterparties, and different operational assumptions depending on the token.
4. Strategy sold 3,588 Bitcoin worth $216 million to fund preferred stock dividends, its largest sale since adopting BTC as its treasury asset. The sale reduced holdings to 843,775 BTC and followed a new capital framework allowing Bitcoin sales to fund dividend payments, while the company kept its $2.55 billion cash reserve intact.
5. On the euro side, MiCA-compliant stablecoins are finally getting some volume. Decta says the market capitalization of these euro tokens rose 128% in the year leading up to the EU’s July 1 regulatory transition deadline, with the combined value of eight actively traded euro stablecoins reaching nearly $674 million and trading volume up 43% over the same period.

For high-risk PSPs, the useful read-through is straightforward: stablecoins are becoming more segmented by purpose, chain, and jurisdiction. That usually means more room for specialized treasury, settlement, and payout setups — and less room for pretending that “stablecoins” is one homogeneous bucket.