July’s data reveals a widening divide between USDT and USDC as card top-ups crossed $1 billion and payments ranked second in crypto funding.
In 2026, stablecoins became one of the fastest-growing segments, peaking at nearly $320B of total capitalization and now settling down closer to $308B. Their role extends well beyond market size: stablecoins are widely used across crypto for trading, settlement, payments, remittances, and other financial activity.
In this stablecoin digest, the CryptoRank Research team analyzed the key metrics of stablecoins and the crypto payments sector. We broke down everything from market dynamics and on-chain activity to crypto payments and venture funding.
Stablecoin News: July 2026 Highlights
July's main developments centered on institutional infrastructure for regulated stablecoins.
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Open USD. On June 30, Open Standard announced Open USD (OUSD), a consortium stablecoin backed by more than 140 companies, including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, and Coinbase. The model distributes most reserve income to partner companies and places governance with an independent partner board rather than a single issuer.
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Circle National Trust. On July 10, Circle received final OCC approval to establish First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A., doing business as Circle National Trust. The institution will initially provide federally regulated digital asset custody for Circle and its affiliates; USDC reserve management is a planned future capability.
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Visa Stablecoin Platform. On July 16, Visa announced the Visa Stablecoin Platform (VSP), a managed environment for institutions to mint, store, transfer, and redeem stablecoins, beginning with Open USD.
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Ripple Mint. On July 23, Ripple launched Ripple Mint, a web and API interface for institutions to mint, redeem, bridge, and monitor RLUSD. Ripple also expanded RLUSD to Base, Optimism, Ink, Unichain, and the XRPL EVM Sidechain.
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Mastercard × BVNK. On August 3, just after July ended, Mastercard completed its acquisition of BVNK for up to $1.8B. BVNK provides infrastructure connecting fiat and stablecoin payments across more than 130 countries. Mastercard said it will use the technology for cross-border remittances, business payments, payouts, settlement, and treasury operations.
Stablecoin Market Dynamics
Total stablecoin market cap ended July at about $308.3B, down roughly 1% from $311.4B in June. Stablecoin supply has now held within a narrow range for the tenth straight month, hovering around the $300-320B mark without any meaningful new issuance.
A marked expansion began in late 2023 from around $130B, and stablecoin supply more than doubled over the next two years to pass $300B by early 2026. Net flows stayed negative for a third straight month in July, with roughly $13.3B leaving the market from May through July. That's the longest stretch of stablecoin outflows since the 2022-2023 drawdown, when supply contracted for nearly a year after the Terra collapse.
The biggest gains came from institutional and RWA-style dollars. Global Dollar (USDG) added about $485M (+17%) on the launch of the Robinhood Chain. Its supply rose from roughly $2.78B to $3.03B in the first week of July, assisted by its revenue-sharing model and MiCA taking full effect on July 1.
BlackRock's tokenized treasury token BUIDL grew about $444M (+20%) on a single week of inflows into Avalanche, where its holdings rose more than 55% to over $600M. Agora's AUSD gained about $72M (+38% off a smaller base) as it expanded onto Monad and added Pendle yield incentives.
The outflows had no single common driver. The largest was USDS at about −$1.46B, followed by USD1, whose ~$598M decline tracked pressure on World Liberty Financial's wider ecosystem. The rest, including USDC and USDT, were ordinary supply swings.
On-Chain Stablecoin Activity
The distribution across blockchains has remained broadly stable over the past year: Ethereum and Tron together carry about 80% of all stablecoin supply. The leading chains' combined share has changed little, so the more meaningful shifts are occurring among smaller networks.
Solana led growth among the large chains, up about 39% to $15.7B, but the mix matters more than the total. A year ago, USDC was about 70% of Solana's stablecoin supply. Today, it is closer to 43%. USDC supply on Solana shrank from roughly $8B to $6.7B, even though it grew globally. The gap was filled by newer stablecoins, USDGO, USD1, BUIDL, USDG, and PYUSD, several of them the same institutional issuers driving growth elsewhere. Solana went from a USDC chain to the one new issuers reach for first.
Hyperliquid L1 grew about 28%, almost entirely from USDC. The chain has a well-developed perpetual trading ecosystem, anchored by its own perp DEX that leads the sector by trading volume. USDC is the main collateral traders post against their positions there, so that activity shows up directly as USDC held on the chain. Its USDC supply rose from about $4.9B to $6.2B over the year, while every other stablecoin on the chain stayed under $180M combined.
