Bitcoin crashed below $78,000 in February 2026, shedding 22% of its value in brutal fashion.
The broader crypto market followed suit, with Ethereum and major altcoins bleeding double-digit losses.
Yet in the wreckage, stablecoin volumes hit $33 trillion. That’s a 72% surge, driven by USDC moving $18.3 trillion and USDT handling $13.3 trillion.
The contrast is stark as Bitcoin tumbled while stablecoins soared. It signals something the industry hasn’t fully reckoned with: crypto may have already moved beyond Bitcoin as its primary engine.
Institutions pulled $1.7 billion out of crypto funds as volatility spiked. But retail traders didn’t flee to dollars.
Instead, they rotated into stablecoins and stayed.
This shift transformed stablecoins from simple entry-exit ramps into something far more fundamental: the settlement infrastructure holding the entire market together when things get messy.
Invezz spoke with Paybis co-founder Konstantins Vasilenko about what’s actually driving this shift and what it means when stablecoins become bigger than Bitcoin itself.
Excerpts:
Konstantins Vasilenko
Invezz: Bitcoin’s down 22%, but stablecoin volumes hit $33 trillion last year. Are stablecoins becoming the actual backbone of crypto?
Konstantins Vasilenko: While Bitcoin dominated headlines in 2025, the fastest-growing assets on Paybis were stablecoins.
USDT volumes grew 423% year-over-year. USDC surged 6,772% from a smaller base.
Even during market drawdowns, crypto users didn’t exit to fiat. They rotated capital into stablecoins to manage liquidity, reduce risk, and wait for better conditions.
Our user poll confirms this. Stablecoins have become a tool for risk avoidance and capital preservation.
Stablecoins used to be entry and exit points, nothing more. Now they’re the infrastructure that holds the market together and keeps capital moving when volatility goes up.
When $33 trillion flows through stablecoins in a single year, you’re not looking at a niche product anymore.
Invezz: USDC moved $18.3 trillion in 2025, more than USDT’s $13.3 trillion, despite being half the size. Why are people choosing it over Tether?
Konstantins Vasilenko: USDC owns DeFi and high-frequency settlement, where the same dollar gets moved dozens of times a day. That inflates transaction volume relative to market cap.
USDT still leads in real-world payments, store of value, and emerging market use. If you run a business or send remittances, you probably use Tether. If you trade on-chain, you probably use USDC.
Institutional money gravitates toward USDC for obvious reasons.
Circle publishes monthly attestations, holds reserves with regulated banks, and secured MiCA approval in Europe. For compliance-heavy players, it’s simply the easier choice.
USDT has deeper liquidity across exchanges and wider availability in markets where people actually need dollar exposure.
They don’t compete for the same users, which is why both can grow without cannibalizing one another.
Invezz: Institutions just yanked $1.7 billion out of crypto funds. Is stablecoin growth real adoption, or are people just looking for the exit?
Konstantins Vasilenko: The $1.7 billion came out of Bitcoin and Ethereum funds, which is institutional money reducing exposure because the macro picture got murky. Stablecoins are a different story, though.
On Paybis, users didn’t exit to fiat when prices dropped. They moved into stablecoins and stayed. USDT volumes on our platform grew 423% year-over-year.
People treat stablecoins as a place to wait now: they reduce risk, stay liquid, and keep their options open.
Institutional fund managers have risk committees and reporting requirements, so when things get volatile, they trim positions. Retail users don’t have those constraints; they can just park in stablecoins until conditions settle.
The outflows and the stablecoin growth aren’t at odds with each other. Different players, different rules, different responses to the same market.
Kevin Warsh and the liquidity question
Invezz: Kevin Warsh is likely the next Fed Chair, and he’s a known hawk. If cheap liquidity dries up, do stablecoins still work?
Konstantins Vasilenko: The Fed held rates steady at 3.5% to 3.75% last week, which keeps macro conditions stable for now.
Cheap liquidity continues to flow to risk assets, and institutions still lean on stablecoins for fast global payments over traditional rails.
Warsh has a hawkish reputation, but he’s also signaled support for rate cuts in the near term. His real focus seems to be shrinking the Fed’s balance sheet, which could tighten liquidity over time, but that’s a gradual process.
I think his appointment could have a positive impact on the crypto industry.
The Federal Reserve is an independent institution, and its primary mandate is to support US monetary policy, so I wouldn’t expect dramatic or immediate results.
Still, Warsh has shown support for crypto, and that could play an important role over the next couple of years.
Stablecoin adoption has more to do with dollar demand than interest-rate policy.
People use them because they want dollar exposure and because traditional banking is slow and expensive. Neither of those factors will change based on what the Fed does.
Invezz: SWIFT is rolling out instant cross-border payments. If banks solve the speed problem, what’s the actual use case for stablecoins outside of trading?
Konstantins Vasilenko: At Sibos 2025, SWIFT unveiled a blockchain-based ledger and announced plans for instant consumer payments by mid-2026.
They clearly see the threat, and they’re responding, which makes sense.
But speed was never the only problem with traditional rails.
SWIFT still needs bank accounts on both ends, still runs through correspondent banks that add fees at each step, and still doesn’t work on weekends or holidays in many corridors.
Stablecoins let you move value peer-to-peer without a bank account, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That matters for the 1.4 billion unbanked people in the world.
It’s also a big deal for businesses that want instant settlement, and for remittance corridors where traditional fees eat 6% or more of every transfer.
Even if SWIFT matches stablecoin speed, the two systems work differently at a fundamental level. One moves messages between banks. The other moves value directly on-chain.
On Europe’s stablecoin power shift
Invezz: Europe banned USDT but greenlit USDC. Does regulatory fragmentation kill stablecoins, or just pick winners and losers?
Konstantins Vasilenko: Fragmentation doesn’t kill stablecoins; it just decides who gets to operate where. Tether looked at MiCA’s requirements and decided Europe wasn’t worth the compliance burden.
Circle took the opposite approach, got a French e-money license, and now has the European market largely to itself.
Both companies made rational calls based on their own priorities.
Tether has deep liquidity in Asia, Latin America, and emerging markets where people actually need dollar exposure and where regulation is lighter.
Circle bets on institutional credibility and regulatory access in the US and Europe.
European users now have fewer stablecoin options, which is the obvious short-term cost. The longer-term question is whether MiCA’s high bar pushes activity to friendlier jurisdictions.
If the US and Asia end up with lighter frameworks, liquidity follows. We’ve seen that pattern play out in other parts of crypto, and there’s no reason stablecoins would be any different.
Invezz: Bloomberg says stablecoin volumes could hit $56 trillion by 2030. What needs to happen for that to actually play out?
Konstantins Vasilenko: The $56 trillion projection assumes around 80% annual growth from where we are now.
That might sound aggressive to some, but volumes hit $33 trillion last year with 72% growth from the year before, so the trajectory is already pointing in that direction.
For the projection to hold, regulatory frameworks and payment infrastructure both need to keep advancing.
The GENIUS Act and MiCA gave the US and Europe their frameworks, and the UK and Canada are working on theirs.
Each jurisdiction that settles its rules brings institutional capital off the sidelines because funds and corporations don’t move until they know what the rules are.
Meanwhile, traditional finance keeps laying more tracks.
Western Union plans to launch stablecoin settlement on Solana this year, MoneyGram and Zelle are adding stablecoin options, and Visa and Mastercard already handle billions in stablecoin-linked card spend.
The more on-ramps that exist, the more volume flows through.
The other factor is demand from markets with inflation, capital controls, or unstable local currencies. People in those places want dollar access, and stablecoins deliver it faster and cheaper than anything else available to them.
So the $56 trillion number is ambitious, but it’s not a fantasy. The regulation, the infrastructure, and the demand are all moving in the same direction.
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