Inside the USD Stablecoin sector, 05 October 2026

Sector Snapshot: USD Stablecoins, 05 October 2026

The USD Stablecoin sector recorded a combined market capitalisation of $289.7 billion across 52 tracked constituents as of 05 October 2026. Concentration is pronounced: Tether alone accounted for a market cap of $184.1 billion, representing approximately 63.5% of the sector total, while the second-largest member, USDC, stood at $74.0 billion. Together those two constituents represent roughly 89% of the aggregate figure. The remaining 50 constituents, including names ranging from USDS at $10.0 billion down to GHO at $698.5 million and Usual USD at $546.2 million, share the residual. This is a heavily top-weighted sector by any standard measure of concentration.

Fee Stream Coverage

Of the 15 largest members listed, only one — Ethena USDe — carries a measurable annualized fee figure, reported as 12.17% annualized from the trailing 30 days to 05 October 2026. All remaining 14 largest members show no fee data. This absence does not necessarily mean those protocols generate no revenue; it may reflect differences in how fee streams are structured, disclosed, or captured by the underlying data methodology. Readers should treat the single available fee observation as a data point about one mechanism, not as a basis for cross-constituent comparison.

Distance from All-Time Highs

The spread of the percent below all-time high metric across the 15 largest members is wider than the sector label might suggest. Values range from –0.25% for USDGO to –39.56% for Global Dollar, as of 05 October 2026. Several members — USDGO, United Stables, PayPal USD, and GHO — sit within approximately 3% of their respective all-time highs. Others, including Tether at –24.44%, Usual USD at –24.65%, and USDD at –19.57%, show more substantial distances. Because these assets are nominally pegged to the US dollar, a large distance from an all-time high may reflect prior supply expansion that has since contracted, or episodic depeg events, rather than price appreciation in the conventional sense.

What the Sector Label Does and Does Not Convey

The label USD Stablecoin describes a shared peg target but does not describe a uniform mechanism. Within the 15 largest constituents alone, backing structures appear to include fiat reserves, overcollateralised on-chain assets, synthetic or delta-neutral designs, and algorithmic components — though the JSON data supplied does not itemise these directly. The trailing 7-day return figures, which range from –4.50% for United Stables to +11.09% for USDD over the trailing 7 days to 05 October 2026, illustrate that peg stability varies materially across members. A sector-level market cap figure therefore aggregates instruments whose risk profiles, redemption mechanisms, and counterparty structures differ in ways the aggregate number does not capture. Readers using sector-level figures should account for this structural heterogeneity before drawing inferences about the group as a whole.