Stablecoin
A digital token designed to keep a steady value, usually one unit per dollar, so it can be used for payments and trading.
Three designs dominate: tokens backed by cash and short-term government debt held by an issuer, tokens backed by other digital assets locked in a contract at more than the value issued, and tokens that attempt stability through supply rules alone. Stability is an engineering goal maintained by reserves, redemption rights, and arbitrage, not an inherent property, and each design fails in a different way. Stablecoins serve as the quote asset in most trading pairs, as collateral in lending and derivatives, and as the settlement instrument for transfers between venues, which is why their combined supply is watched as a measure of capital available in the market. Supply expands when new tokens are issued against incoming funds and contracts when tokens are redeemed and destroyed.
In practice
Most digital-asset trading pairs quote prices in a stablecoin rather than in bank dollars, because a token settles on the same rails as the asset being traded.
The common misunderstanding
A stablecoin is not a dollar in a bank account; the holder has a claim governed by the issuer's terms and reserves, without deposit insurance.
The figure this maps to
The value of stablecoins issued on, or bridged to, a particular blockchain.
Limits: Native issuance and bridged wrappers are easy to count twice: an issuer mints on one chain, a bridge locks that supply and mints a representation on another, and a careless total includes both. Issuers pre-mint inventory that sits in a treasury address awaiting distribution, which inflates reported…