Stablecoin as collateral, not as currency.
The interesting question is no longer whether stablecoins move money. It is whether they can serve as posted collateral against destination-country property credit — and what that does to the cost of capital for diaspora households.
Stablecoin transaction volume, 2025
Artemis Analytics
USDC share of that volume
Artemis Analytics
Net stablecoin throughput estimate
TRM Labs
Collateral-equivalence framework
Bank for International Settlements
Where the volume actually went
Artemis Analytics tracked $33 trillion in stablecoin transaction volume across public networks in 2025, with USDC contributing $18.3 trillion of that figure. TRM Labs' parallel monitoring estimated total stablecoin throughput across all venues at roughly $4 trillion of net economic activity once intra-exchange flows are stripped out.
What both datasets confirm is that the marginal stablecoin transaction is no longer crypto-native. It is increasingly a payment, a remittance leg, or — and this is the structural shift — a posted-collateral position against fiat credit.
Why collateral, not transfer, is the underwriting question
BIS Working Paper 1265 (2024) argues that the stable-value characteristic of fully reserved stablecoins makes them functionally equivalent, from a credit-risk perspective, to short-duration USD collateral. The implication for diaspora finance is direct: a household holding USDC against verifiable income in EUR or GBP can post a stable, instantly-settled collateral position against a euro- or dollar-denominated credit facility used to fund a destination-country project.
This is not a payments story. It is a balance-sheet story. The household's collateral never leaves the residence-country regulated environment; the destination-country counterparty receives credit, not cryptocurrency.
What the IMF actually said
The IMF's 2025 working paper Understanding Stablecoins concluded that fully reserved, audited stablecoins present materially lower systemic risk than non-reserved alternatives, and explicitly identified collateralised credit as a use-case warranting prudential clarification rather than prohibition.
Read together with BIS 1265, this points toward an emerging regulatory frame in which stablecoin-collateralised diaspora credit becomes a recognised — though regulated — financing primitive.
The corridor implication
For corridors with managed-float or restricted FX regimes (Nigeria, Ghana, Argentina, Lebanon), stablecoin collateral compresses the documentation burden of cross-border underwriting. For pegged-currency corridors (UEMOA, CEMAC, Morocco), the immediate benefit is liquidity, not FX risk transfer.
The structural point holds across both: the asset stays where it can be regulated, the credit goes where it can be deployed, and the household keeps optionality on both sides.
- Working Paper 1265: Stablecoins and the dollar system — BIS.
- Understanding Stablecoins (2025) — IMF.
- State of Stablecoins 2025 — Artemis Analytics.
- Stablecoin Market Update 2024 — TRM Labs.
- Geography of Crypto 2024 — Chainalysis.