Inside the Stablecoins sector, 28 August 2026

Sector Composition and Concentration

As of 28 August 2026, the stablecoin sector covered 87 constituents with an aggregate market capitalisation of $290.24 billion. Concentration within that universe is pronounced. The two largest members alone — Tether at $183.35 billion and USDC at $73.56 billion — account for the substantial majority of that total. The next thirteen tracked members in the listed set each report market caps below $10 billion, illustrating a steep drop-off from the top two positions. The remaining constituents tracked beyond the fifteen largest members are not individually itemised in the available figures, so the tail distribution cannot be described with precision.

Fee Stream Availability

Of the fifteen largest members listed, only one — Ethena USDe — carries a measurable annualized fee figure, reported as $0.487 (annualized from the trailing 30 days to 28 August 2026). The remaining fourteen members show no fee data in the supplied figures. This does not necessarily mean those assets generate no economic activity; it may reflect differences in how protocol revenue is structured, disclosed, or captured by the data methodology. Readers should treat the absence of a fee figure as a data-availability observation rather than a confirmed absence of protocol economics.

Distance from All-Time Highs

The percent below all-time high figures vary considerably across the listed members, which itself warrants methodological attention. For assets explicitly designed to maintain a fixed peg, deviations from an all-time high in market-cap terms reflect changes in circulating supply, not price appreciation or depreciation in the conventional sense. Viewed through that lens, the spread — ranging from Global Dollar at –39.56% below its all-time high market cap to USDGO at –0.24% below its all-time high — describes how far each asset's outstanding supply has contracted from its peak issuance, not a loss of purchasing-power parity. Tether sits –24.42% below its recorded all-time high, while BFUSD and United Stables are within –0.67% and –0.83% respectively.

What the Sector Label Does and Does Not Convey

The label stablecoins groups assets that share a stated design objective — maintaining a stable value relative to a reference, most commonly the US dollar — but it does not imply that the mechanisms, counterparty structures, collateral types, or redemption rights are uniform across members. Fiat-backed, crypto-collateralised, algorithmically managed, and yield-bearing instruments may all appear within the same sector boundary. The 7-day returns for all fifteen listed members register at either 0.0% or 0.1% for the trailing 7 days to 28 August 2026, consistent with price-stability objectives, but that surface similarity in return data does not resolve the underlying structural heterogeneity. Readers comparing members within this sector should consult the individual asset's collateral and governance documentation alongside aggregate figures.