The sector now represents roughly $309B in market value, and most of the liquidity is concentrated in a few major players.
Here are the Top 10 stablecoins by market cap and the companies behind them:
$USDT — Tether — $184B
$USDC — Circle — $77B
$USDS — Sky Protocol — $10.8B
$USDE — Ethena — $6.0B
$USD1 — World Liberty Financial / BitGo infrastructure — $4.6B
$DAI — MakerDAO / Sky ecosystem — $4.3B
$PYUSD — PayPal / Paxos — $4.2B
$USDF — Falcon Finance — $1.74B
$USDG — Paxos Digital Singapore — $1.71B
$RLUSD — Ripple — $1.59B
How do stablecoin issuers make money?
For most fiat-backed stablecoins like USDT, USDC, PYUSD, USDG and RLUSD, the business model is relatively simple.
Users deposit dollars → the issuer mints the stablecoin → those reserves are invested mainly in short-term U.S. Treasury bills, cash, and repo agreements.
The issuer earns the yield from these assets, which becomes a highly profitable business at scale.
That’s why stablecoin companies have become major buyers of U.S. Treasuries.
Not all stablecoins work the same way.
Some, like DAI and USDS, are issued by decentralized protocols and generate revenue through collateralized lending and protocol fees.
Others, like USDe, are synthetic dollars, using spot crypto assets combined with derivatives hedging strategies to maintain price stability.
The real business of stablecoins isn’t just issuing digital dollars.
It’s turning global liquidity and reserves into a massive yield-generating machine.