Stablecoin Supply Set to Skyrocket to $2 Trillion by 2028, Standard Chartered Says
A new report from Standard Chartered forecasts a dramatic surge in the total supply of stablecoins — from $230 billion today to $2 trillion by the end of 2028 — fueled by anticipated U.S. legislation designed to formalize rules for the digital dollar sector.
According to the report published Tuesday, analysts led by Geoffrey Kendrick, Standard Chartered’s global head of digital assets research, say that the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act could be signed into law this summer. The legislation recently passed the Senate Banking Committee and is expected to usher in a new era of legal clarity and institutional legitimacy for the stablecoin industry.
“We estimate that this would cause total stablecoin supply to rise from $230 billion today to $2 trillion by end-2028,” Kendrick and team wrote.
$1.6 Trillion in New Treasury Demand
One of the most significant implications of this expansion is the expected demand for U.S. Treasury bills. Standard Chartered estimates that stablecoin issuers would need to purchase around $1.6 trillion in T-bills over the next four years — roughly $400 billion annually.
“The industry could well account for the largest buying flow of any sector across all U.S. Treasuries,” the analysts noted. “Only foreign buyers have matched this scale post-COVID, and even then, it was more diversified across T-bills, notes, and bonds.”
Such demand could play a pivotal role in supporting the U.S. government’s borrowing capacity, especially during President Donald Trump’s second term, should the estimated issuance volumes hold true.
Circle’s Reserve Model May Become Industry Standard
With the GENIUS Act requiring reserve holdings to have a duration of 93 days or less, analysts expect stablecoin issuers to follow Circle’s reserve approach as the template. Circle currently holds 88% of its USDC reserves in short-term U.S. government bonds, averaging a 12-day duration.
“Given that stablecoin issuers would likely prefer to avoid risk around the time of FOMC meetings, we see Circle’s shorter-duration holdings as a good indication of what the industry will adopt going forward,” the report stated.
If adopted industry-wide, that model would push total stablecoin-related T-bill holdings to $1.75 trillion by 2028, up from just $150 billion today.
Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coindoo and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.
