Binance Research: 30% of Users Hold Over 50% Stablecoins as Stablecoins Emerge as Global Settlement Layer

According to Binance Research, stablecoins have evolved from trading instruments into a fully functional parallel monetary system fulfilling all three classical functions of money: store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account, as of July 8, 2026.

The report, based on proprietary Binance data, shows 30% of users now hold over half their portfolio in stablecoins, up from 4% in 2020. BNB Chain processes 10 million stablecoin transactions daily, and Binance Pay merchant volume grew 114% year-on-year with median transaction size rising from $10 to $18. Weekend stablecoin trading volume reaches $76 billion, comparable to Visa's daily transaction volume. The report identifies emerging use cases including AI agents transacting at median size of $0.34 and on-chain foreign exchange markets for local-currency stablecoin pairs.