Stablecoins USDT and USDC are increasingly diverging, with competition splitting clearly between payments and decentralised finance (DeFi).

Cointelegraph, a blockchain media outlet, reported on July 7 that Tether’s USDT led in on-chain payments and remittances, while Circle’s USDC had an edge in DeFi and trading.

Data platform Dune said USDT processed about $95 billion in verified commerce payments in the first half of this year. USDC totalled $14 billion over the same period. USDT also dominated business-to-business payments, accounting for about 92% of the $48 billion in total B2B payment volume.

USDT’s payment profile was more pronounced on Tron. On Tron, USDT’s largest network, about 93% of the total supply was held in non-exchange wallets. Dune viewed the metric as showing USDT is being used as a payments and remittance asset.

USDC, by contrast, has established itself as a core stablecoin for DeFi. On Base, USDC recorded about $2.6 trillion in transfers in June, the largest among all token and chain combinations. It also processed $1.6 trillion on Ethereum, and USDC’s daily turnover on Base in June was about 20 times the circulating supply.

The turnover metric also shows where USDC is used. USDC’s daily turnover on Base in June was about 20 times the circulating supply. Dune said the figure reflects broad use in trading and DeFi.

Against this backdrop, the market’s earlier framework of simply comparing USDT and USDC is losing traction. Dune viewed the two stablecoins as dividing roles rather than competing head-on. It said a structure is taking hold in which USDT dominates payments while USDC underpins crypto trading and DeFi activity.

Distribution by chain also differed. USDT supply is split almost evenly between Tron and Ethereum. USDC is expanding to newer blockchains, but still has a high reliance on Ethereum. That means blockchain choice is acting as a factor that determines how stablecoins are used.

Both assets remain at the centre of the overall stablecoin market. Tracking more than 200 stablecoins across multiple blockchains, Dune found USDT and USDC together accounted for 83% of a roughly $315 billion market.

The regulatory environment is also affecting market expansion. In the United States, the Genius Act enacted in 2025 established the first federal regulatory framework for payment stablecoins. That opened a path for banks and companies to issue U.S. dollar-linked digital assets.

Congress is currently discussing the Clarity Act, which sets the market structure for digital assets. The key focus is setting standards for whether crypto assets fall under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission or the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. It is not a bill that directly regulates stablecoins, but it could affect the institutional environment in which issuers, exchanges and DeFi platforms operate.

The Clarity Act passed the Senate Banking Committee in May. Galaxy, however, lowered the likelihood of passage in a full vote before the August recess to 50% as the congressional schedule tightens. The U.S. stablecoin market is seeing a growing split between payments and DeFi roles, while whether the regulatory framework becomes more concrete is emerging as the next point to watch.