Inside the Stablecoins sector, 28 September 2026

Sector Composition and Concentration

As of 28 September 2026, the stablecoin sector covered by this dataset comprised 81 constituents with an aggregate market capitalisation of $291.4 billion. Concentration is pronounced: the two largest members alone account for the vast majority of that total. Tether carried a market cap of $183.7 billion and USDC carried $75.1 billion, together representing approximately 89 percent of the sector figure. The remaining 13 members listed here range from roughly $698 million (GHO) to $9.8 billion (USDS), and the 66 constituents not individually reported account for the balance. The sector therefore exhibits a strongly right-skewed size distribution, with the top two members dwarfing all others by a wide margin.

Fee Stream Availability

Of the 15 largest members shown, only one — Ethena USDe — carries a measurable annualised fee figure, recorded at 12.17 percent annualised from the trailing 30 days to 28 September 2026. All other 14 members in this list return a null fee value. The dataset notes that fee figures are annualised from the trailing 30 days; a null therefore indicates either that no fee data were available for that period or that the asset's structure does not produce a reportable fee stream in this framework. Readers should be cautious about drawing comparisons across members on a fee basis given how sparsely populated that field is.

Distance from All-Time Highs

The percent below all-time high figures across the 15 listed members span a notably wide range, from –0.26 percent (USDGO) to –39.57 percent (Global Dollar) as of 28 September 2026. Several members — USDGO, BFUSD, United Stables, and PayPal USD — sit within roughly 2 percent of their all-time highs, while others such as Tether (–24.45 percent), USDD (–19.63 percent), and Dai (–17.95 percent) show larger gaps. For assets designed to maintain a fixed peg, deviations of this magnitude in the all-time-high metric may reflect historical episodes of peg stress, changes in circulating supply methodology, or differences in how the high-water mark was recorded — the data alone do not disambiguate these explanations.

What the Sector Label Does and Does Not Convey

The label stablecoins groups assets that share a stated design goal of price stability, typically relative to a fiat currency, but it does not imply structural homogeneity. Members in this sector include fiat-backed, crypto-collateralised, and algorithmically-managed instruments, among other designs. Their risk profiles, collateral arrangements, redemption mechanisms, and regulatory classifications differ materially. The trailing 7-day returns illustrate this: over the 7 days to 28 September 2026, figures ranged from –5.52 percent (BFUSD) to +1.37 percent (USDD), a spread that would be unexpected if all constituents behaved identically. The sector aggregate market cap is therefore a measure of collective scale, not of a homogeneous asset class.