Stablecoin market shrank by $7.7 billion in June, biggest drop since Terra-Luna crash
Total stablecoin supply has fallen about $10 billion from its May peak to roughly $312 billion as USDT and USDC redemptions reduced crypto liquidity, even while transaction volumes and tokenized assets kept growing.
The stablecoin market contracted by $7.7 billion in June to about $312 billion, the largest monthly decline in dollar terms since the May 2022 TerraUSD collapse, bringing the total drop since the May 2026 peak to roughly $10 billion. The June decline amounted to about 2.4%, while the retreat from the peak was about 3%. USDT fell from around $190 billion in May to about $184.15 billion, and USDC slipped from a March peak near $80 billion to roughly $73.41 billion, accounting for most of the pullback. DefiLlama data shows USDT still makes up close to 59% of the market. The contraction points to thinner crypto liquidity because stablecoins are widely used as trading and settlement assets, and the retreat coincided with more than $4 billion of June outflows from U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. Even so, activity remained strong: adjusted stablecoin transaction volume reached a record $1.78 trillion in June, with USDC processing about $1.21 trillion and USDT handling $573 billion, while tokenized real-world assets grew past $30 billion and tokenized equity volume rose 145% in June to a record $3.86 billion.
- stablecoin redemptions: The process of exchanging stablecoins back for traditional dollars, which reduces tokens in circulation.
- tokenized real-world assets: Traditional financial assets such as Treasuries, funds or private credit represented as digital tokens on a blockchain.
- liquidity: How easily capital can be deployed in markets; in crypto, stablecoins often serve as readily usable trading and settlement capital.