The total supply of stablecoins crossed $310 billion this week, according to data compiled by DefiLlama and CCData, marking a near-50% jump from the $208 billion outstanding when Europe’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation (MiCA) took full effect in December 2024. The threshold reframes a market that has spent two years adjusting to two competing pressures: a regulated euro-zone footprint anchored in Paris and Frankfurt, and a far larger offshore dollar pool dominated by Tether.
Tether (USDT) accounts for roughly $215 billion of the total, up from $137 billion at the start of 2025, while Circle (USDC) supply has reached approximately $72 billion, roughly doubling over the same period. Newer entrants — including Société Générale-FORGE’s EUR CoinVertible (EURCV), Banking Circle’s EURI, and Sky’s USDS — together account for less than 6% of outstanding supply but a disproportionate share of euro-denominated volume, according to Kaiko market-share data reviewed by Clarqo.
Tether’s profit, the offshore anchor
Tether’s preliminary Q1 attestation, released Monday by BDO, points to net profit of approximately $4.8 billion for the three months ended March 31. The figure tracks Treasury-bill yields rather than crypto market direction: the issuer holds an estimated $135 billion in US Treasury bills, making it one of the largest single non-sovereign holders of short-dated American debt. CFO Giancarlo Devasini said in a statement that excess equity reserves now exceed $24 billion, with $9.6 billion deployed into ventures across AI compute, energy, and Bitcoin mining.
That portfolio strategy has drawn fresh scrutiny in Brussels, where Tether remains explicitly excluded from MiCA-compliant trading on EU venues. Binance, Kraken, and Coinbase Europe delisted USDT spot pairs for European retail users during Q1 2025; the offshore market has continued to absorb the displaced volume, with USDT now anchoring more than 73% of global spot volume across non-EU exchanges, according to Kaiko.
Circle, MiCA, and the euro-denominated divergence
Circle’s growth has been more deliberate. The Boston-based issuer, which completed its New York Stock Exchange listing in June 2025 at a $9.4 billion valuation, has used its e-money institution license — granted by France’s ACPR in July 2024 — to position USDC as the default MiCA-compliant dollar token in the bloc. CEO Jeremy Allaire told analysts on the company’s Q4 call that European-attributed reserves had grown roughly sevenfold since the regulation took effect, though they remained “under €15 billion.”
ESMA’s second-year compliance review, published April 22, tightens reserve-segregation rules and lowers the daily transaction threshold that triggers significant-token treatment from €200 million to €120 million. That recalibration captures EURCV and EURI for the first time, requiring 60% reserve placement at SSM-supervised credit institutions rather than money-market funds. Société Générale-FORGE, which issues EURCV, said it had already restructured its reserve waterfall in March in anticipation of the move.
What changes next
Three threads to watch through Q2. First, whether the US Senate’s GENIUS Act — which would import a federal stablecoin licensing regime — clears its remaining markup in May, and whether Tether’s stated US-domiciled USA1 token ships in time to claim a charter. Second, whether MiCA’s lower significant-token threshold drags volume back to MiCA-licensed venues, or merely accelerates the offshore drift. And third, whether the divergence between regulated euro coins and offshore dollar liquidity ends up reinforcing dollar dominance on-chain — or, perversely, finally creates the conditions for a credible euro-denominated alternative.
For now, $310 billion is sitting on-chain. Most of it is still dollar-denominated. And most of it is still Tether’s.
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