Artemis has produced a report on stablecoin real world payments based on a survey of 31 companies that process mainstream stablecoin payments. Artemis estimates that sanitized annual stablecoin payments are around $26 trillion, mainly for crypto trading. It believes the 31 companies account for a large slice of real world stablecoin payments, and together they processed an annualized rate of $72 billion in February.
Some of the findings were expected, such as the growth in business to business payments accounting for half of the $6 billion real world payments in February 2025. That’s a 288% increase over the $772 million B2B figure a year earlier. The average size of B2B payments on the Ethereum and TRON blockchains were pretty high ($219,000 each) compared to other chains such as Polygon where the average was under $10,000.
Tether made up a higher proportion of payments than USDC, which is also predictable. However, it accounted for 90% of real world payments in January and 86% in February, higher than one might expect given the market capitalization relative to USDC is 71%.
That said, Tether has always had a higher velocity of payments. During the past 24 hours the volume of payments represents 26.6% of its market capitalization compared to USDC’s 10.8%. Given Tether is the token of choice for crypto settlement, that high velocity makes sense. But it appears to apply to real world payments as well.
TRON blockchain dominates real world payments
Another result that surprised was the degree of dominance of the TRON blockchain. A 2023 report from Brevan Howard Digital highlighted TRON’s popularity for stablecoin payments and its prevalence in emerging markets such as Africa, Asia and Latin America is well known. However, the heavy usage for payments originating from the United States and Europe is unexpected. A quick look at Reddit highlights significant skepticism towards the blockchain and its founder in the United States.
However, the heavy usage for payments originating from the United States and Europe suggests that destination markets, not just source regions, drive blockchain selection. This explains why TRON dominates even in payments from Western countries – if the destination is an emerging market where TRON is preferred, that influences the entire corridor’s blockchain choice. Artemis noted that the Singapore-China corridor is the most popular, where despite Singapore’s preference for Ethereum (over 60% usage), China’s overwhelming TRON dominance (more than 90%) likely influences cross-border payment decisions.
One of the original reasons for TRON’s popularity was low cost and scalability. However, costs have risen over time so that currently sending a payment via TRON is significantly more expensive than other blockchains, with all the other major chains charging cents versus TRON’s multi dollar charges. However, there are ways to reduce the TRON payment costs, such as by staking TRON tokens to earn energy (gas).
Ethereum was the second most popular blockchain, and is completely dominant in Nigeria. It made up more than half the usage in a few other African countries such as Uganda, South Africa and Kenya and Peru and Argentina in Latin America. By contrast, the survey showed it hardly being used in Brazil where TRON dominates.
The Artemis survey, in conjunction with Castle Island Ventures and Dragonfly, reveals that real world stablecoin usage diverges from expectations, with Tether’s payment dominance exceeding its market share and blockchain selection driven more by payment corridors and destination preferences than the origin country alone.
