Stablecoins 2030 - Web3 to Wall Street
Download hereBack in April (Citi Institute GPS: Digital Dollars), we argued that 2025 would be blockchain’s ChatGPT moment, with stablecoins igniting the shift. Now that transformation is unfolding at remarkable pace.
Cryptocurrency company listings, record fundraising and breakthroughs in technology all suggest that institutional adoption is accelerating.
This summer has brought a raft of announcements, especially by digitally native companies, to bring stablecoins to commerce and real-world activities. In addition, existing crypto-driven stablecoin activity has continued to grow. Issuance volumes are up from approximately $200 billion at the start of 2025 to about $280 billion.
We are revising our stablecoin total issuance forecasts in this report to: $1.9 trillion base case (previously $1.6 trillion) and $4.0 trillion bull case ($3.7 trillion), due to the strong growth of the market in the past six months and the wide range of project announcements, in the U.S. and internationally.
The evolution of digital assets - stablecoins, tokenized deposits, deposit tokens - feels in some ways like the early days of the dotcom boom. Skeptics once again proclaim that banks will be disintermediated. But we don’t believe crypto will burn down the existing system. Rather it is helping us reimagine it.
We are excited by the opportunities presented by stablecoins, but they are not the answer to everything. Domestic consumer payments in many countries work well: they are already real-time, 24x7 and low-cost. Cross-border payments are a different matter, but fintechs and big banks have made rapid progress here too.
Stablecoins may be a vital addition to the finance toolkit, especially for digitally native companies and investors, as well as frontier market households looking for an easy way hold dollars. But for many, bank tokens - deposit tokens, tokenized deposits and similar - will be an easier integration.
We believe that the turnover of bank tokens could exceed stablecoins by 2030, even with a small shift of current traditional rails on chain. It is not a digital format war that we foresee. But a continued progress towards smarter, faster finance.
Key Takeaways
In our April 2025 Citi GPS: Digital Dollars, we argued 2025 would be a ChatGPT moment for the institutional adoption of blockchain. The past six months have confirmed this, with digitally native companies leading the “real world” charge.
Reflecting rapid YTD growth and new project announcements, we revise our 2030 base case estimate for stablecoin issuance to $1.9 trillion (previously $1.6 trillion) and bull case to $4.0 trillion (previously $3.7 trillion).
At 50x velocity (see page 22), similar to fiat payment velocity over time, stablecoins could support nearly $100 trillion in transaction activity by 2030 (base case). The same velocity for our bull case (market size $4.0 trillion) would imply $200 trillion.
We see an ecosystem where stablecoins, tokenized deposits, deposit tokens, and CBDCs can all flourish and co-exist. Different forms of money will find different product market fit with usage shaped by trust, interoperability, and regulatory clarity.
Bank tokens (tokenized deposits, deposit tokens, and similar), offering the trust, familiarity and regulatory safeguards of bank money, are preferred by many corporates. 2030 bank token transaction volumes could exceed stablecoins.
Large corporate treasuries are interested in programmability, enabling real-time settlement/reconciliation, compliance embedded at the point of transaction, and fewer friction points. These can be offered by bank tokens and stablecoins.
On-chain money volumes are likely to remain heavily USD denominated and are a source of incremental new demand for U.S. treasuries. However, HK, UAE and other innovative hubs are also hot spots of activity – this is not just about USD.
While our annual turnover forecasts for stablecoins (base case: $100 trillion) and bank tokens (above $100 trillion) may appear large to the layperson, this is still small relative to money flows: leading banks move $5-10 trillion per day today.
