Tron has become a powerhouse in the stablecoin ecosystem. The total supply of Tether (USDT) on the network hit a significant milestone last week, surpassing $75 billion. That figure represents over half of the total supply of USDT across all blockchains (most of which is on Ethereum), and signals not just explosive growth since the start of 2025, but also a shift in how and where stablecoins are being used. The upsurge in USDT supply is only one facet of this complex tale. Tron has emerged as a favored infrastructure layer for a range of applications. These include cross-border payments, retail transfers, and exchange settlements. This places Tron in the center of a burgeoning financial services ecosystem. Its rapid growth positions it as a key player, if not the key player, for the aforementioned applications. Tron Becomes the Leading Chain for USDT Activity Although Ethereum is still a key space for DeFi and high-end, institutional applications, Tron has established itself as the go-to place for some very specific decentralized finance activities—and the only place for some of this activity. It has become the dominant chain for Tether activity. More than half of the USDT circulating in the world today is on Tron, and it might as well be a kind of central bank for stablecoin liquidity. Even more remarkable is how big the scale of this activity is. Last week, the on-chain volume for USDT on Tron hit an all-time high of $166.5 billion — the highest weekly volume the network has ever seen. And this uptick in USD(T) not only translates into a lot more tokens floating around, but also seems to indicate a fair amount of actual usage, with all kinds of money-moving happening from Tron’s user base. Tron has been integrated into almost all of the major cryptocurrency exchanges, and has very low transaction fees. Because of these two reasons, Tron’s blockchain has become a great layer for moving funds around swiftly and at a very low cost, especially when you compare it to Ethereum, which has a layer that’s far from speedy, and whose transaction fees (known as “gas” fees) tend to spike during times when the network is congested. Retail Usage Dominates by Count, But Volume Comes from Big Players The other thing that makes the Tron network so dominant is that it has the most user activity of all the networks. It hosts about 75% of all USDT addresses. And those addresses, on average, do about 2.15 million transfers a day. On average. The vast majority of those transfers are between $10 and $10,000. So these are not big transfers. For everyday users, the utility of stablecoins is growing, as seen in the current explosion of small transfers. This trend seems most pronounced in regions where limited access to traditional banking and volatile fiat currencies push people toward more reliable financial instruments. In such places, USDT on Tron seems a go-to option for a simple, stable way to store value, make payments, and access the global economy. The USDT supply on @trondao surpassed $75 billion last week, following explosive growth since the start of the year. Let's dive into Tron's stablecoin success pic.twitter.com/TbHBgN3RpS — Sentora (previously IntoTheBlock) (@SentoraHQ) May 20, 2025 However, even though retail is very active in terms of the sheer number of transactions, it is still large-scale movement of funds that drives the major share of retail’s outsize appearance in the flat little pie charts that crypto exchanges like to publish. Approximately 71% of all USDT volume on Tron comes not from people buying and selling, but from transfers of a better-than-average-size using the network for settlements and managing treasury functions. This two-fold structure — a large number of small transfers counterbalanced by a handful of large ones — demonstrates that Tron is becoming ever more vital as both a means for retail transactions and a vehicle for settling wholesale accounts. Illicit Use Declines as Legitimate Activity Surges One area where Tron has made remarkable strides is in mitigating the obscene behavior associated with transfers of stablecoins. In 2023, the network drew the ire of many in the crypto world for being the home of a huge volume of dubious transactions. But by April 2024, when we crunched the numbers, they showed that the share of these kinds of transactions had dropped by nearly half, suggesting that the network is being used in a more legitimate way and is maturing, in the regulatory sandbox sense. This decrease occurs as the crypto sector makes a concerted effort to clean up on-chain finance. By using on-chain finance, a person should comply with global regulations. The current effort by the crypto sector makes a clear case for the sustainable and transparent ecosystems that should accommodate the building blocks of on-chain finance. If on-chain usage continues to attract business flows in a legitimate way, then the on-chain finance that it uses has the potential to be a strong signal for all who are likely to build on-chain finance next. Conclusion The stablecoin economy is now receiving a huge boost from the blockchain network Tron. It had no share, as all, of USDT (the Tether stablecoin) in 2019. Now, Tron has the majority share of USDT in 2025, making it the network that serves the greatest number of USDT users globally. Alongside this, Tron serves over two million users a day who rely on its various smart contracts to complete their business transactions — making Tron into something not at all unlike the traditional global payments network, Visa. The network is developing rapidly under an ever-watchful eye of regulators, and it remains to be seen whether Tron can keep the system compliant while also yielding the efficiencies of a finance protocol working in the real world. For now, though, Tron’s success with a stablecoin seems like a step toward making its network more suitable for all kinds of crypto activities, from trading to lending. Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any services. Follow us on Twitter @nulltxnews to stay updated with the latest Crypto, NFT, AI, Cybersecurity, Distributed Computing, and Metaverse news !
