Ten stablecoins hold $289,24 billion of a $311,10 billion market spread across 423 tracked coins, so the top ten are 93% of it. Tether stands at $183,34 billion and USD Coin at $74,34 billion, which together is 82,8%. Two entries in that top ten are not really stablecoins in the old sense: they are tokenised Treasury funds that ended up in the same table. Figures read from DefiLlama on 4 September 2026.
| Stablecoin | Ticker | Circulating | Share | Backing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tether | USDT | $183,34B | 58,9% | Fiat and equivalents |
| USD Coin | USDC | $74,34B | 23,9% | Fiat and equivalents |
| Sky Dollar | USDS | $6,59B | 2,1% | Crypto collateral |
| Dai | DAI | $4,81B | 1,5% | Crypto collateral |
| Ethena USDe | USDe | $4,31B | 1,4% | Crypto collateral, hedged |
| World Liberty Financial USD | USD1 | $4,24B | 1,4% | Fiat and equivalents |
| Global Dollar | USDG | $3,19B | 1,0% | Fiat and equivalents |
| PayPal USD | PYUSD | $3,02B | 1,0% | Fiat and equivalents |
| BlackRock USD fund | BUIDL | $2,78B | 0,9% | Tokenised Treasury fund |
| Circle USYC | USYC | $2,62B | 0,8% | Tokenised yield fund |
How this ranking was built
Order is set by circulating supply in dollars, as reported by DefiLlama on 4 September 2026. Its tracker held 423 pegged assets totalling $311,10 billion that day. The backing column repeats the mechanism the tracker records: fiat reserves, crypto collateral, or a claim on a fund. No yield, redemption terms or attestation quality is scored here, because none of it is comparable from a single figure.
Coins pegged to something other than the dollar are included in the $311,10 billion total but none reached the top ten. Algorithmic designs with no collateral are counted where the tracker still lists them, which is why the total is larger than the sum of the reserve-backed coins alone.
Two entries are tokenised funds, not stablecoins
BlackRock’s BUIDL at $2,78 billion and Circle’s USYC at $2,62 billion sit in ninth and tenth place. Neither is a payment token. Both are shares in a fund holding short-term government paper, and both pay yield to the holder, which a payment stablecoin by design does not.
They appear here because the category boundary moved rather than because anyone made an error. A token that holds a dollar of Treasuries and trades at a dollar looks identical to a stablecoin from the outside, and trackers classify by behaviour. The practical consequence is that any market-size figure you read now mixes two products with different regulators, different buyers and different reasons to exist. We separated the fund side of it in our ranking of RWA tokenization platforms by assets, where BUIDL is the largest entry rather than the ninth.
What the concentration means in practice
- Two coins are 82,8% of the market. Tether and USDC together hold $257,68 billion. Everything else, 421 assets, shares the remaining $53,42 billion.
- The third place is one fortieth of the first. Sky Dollar at $6,59 billion is the largest crypto-collateralised coin and holds 3,6% of what Tether does. The gap is the whole argument about why decentralised stablecoins have not displaced reserve-backed ones.
- Corporate issuers now sit mid-table. PayPal USD at $3,02 billion and World Liberty Financial’s USD1 at $4,24 billion are both larger than several long-running DeFi designs. Distribution beat mechanism.
- For a project choosing a settlement asset, the depth question has one answer at the top and a much harder one below it. Below third place the liquidity on any single venue is thin enough that pair selection matters more than the coin.
Where the published figures drift
Summaries of this market circulating in September 2026 put Tether near $190 billion and USDC near $78 billion. The tracker reports $183,34 billion and $74,34 billion. Both published figures run about 4% and 5% high, which is small in percentage terms and roughly $10 billion in absolute terms.
The drift is not carelessness so much as staleness: supply moves daily, and a number quoted without a date is a number from whenever someone last looked. That is worth knowing if you are sizing a treasury or writing a deck, because a rounded figure repeated three times acquires a confidence it never earned. Every figure above can be re-read at the source in under a minute.
What this ranking does not settle
Supply measures adoption, not safety. It says nothing about who holds the reserves, how often they are attested, what happens in a redemption run, or which jurisdictions will still permit the coin next year. The largest entry has been the largest through several periods when its disclosure was disputed, so size and trust are clearly separable here.
It also says nothing about where any of these actually trade in depth, which is the question that decides whether a pair works for your users. That sits in our list of the top 30 decentralized exchanges and, for routing across chains, in the comparison of cross-chain DEX venues.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the biggest stablecoins by market cap in 2026?
On 4 September 2026: Tether at $183,34 billion, USD Coin at $74,34 billion, Sky Dollar at $6,59 billion, Dai at $4,81 billion and Ethena USDe at $4,31 billion. The ten largest hold $289,24 billion of a $311,10 billion market spread across 423 tracked assets.
How big is the stablecoin market?
$311,10 billion across 423 pegged assets on 4 September 2026. Concentration is extreme: two coins hold 82,8% and the top ten hold 93%. Trackers differ on the total because some now include tokenised Treasury funds, which behave like stablecoins but pay yield and answer to different regulators.
Why is BlackRock’s BUIDL listed as a stablecoin?
Because trackers classify by behaviour. BUIDL holds short-term government paper and trades at a dollar, which looks identical to a reserve-backed stablecoin from outside. It is a fund share that pays yield, which a payment stablecoin does not. At $2,78 billion it is ninth here and first in the separate RWA ranking.
Are published stablecoin market caps accurate?
They drift, usually high. Figures circulating in September 2026 put Tether near $190 billion and USDC near $78 billion against tracked values of $183,34 billion and $74,34 billion, so about 4% and 5% over. Supply changes daily, and a number quoted without a date is simply older than it looks.
How large are decentralised stablecoins compared with Tether?
Small. Sky Dollar, the largest crypto-collateralised coin, holds $6,59 billion, which is 3,6% of Tether’s supply. Dai adds $4,81 billion and Ethena USDe $4,31 billion. Fifteen years of design work in that direction has produced roughly one twentieth of the reserve-backed market.
Related reading
For how tokenised funds are marketed to allocators rather than to traders, see our notes on marketing an RWA or stablecoin product.