Financial institutions are increasingly prioritizing the development of tokenized deposit infrastructures, which now facilitate over $4 trillion in annual transaction flows. This momentum contrasts sharply with stablecoin adoption, which remains less advanced than previously estimated. As of early 2026, total stablecoin circulation hovers at just over $300 billion—a figure that is mostly stagnant over the last six months and falls significantly short of the multi-trillion-dollar projections once predicted for the end of the decade. For instance, a 2023 forecast by Citi anticipated that stablecoin adoption would reach $4 trillion by 2030. Management consulting firm McKinsey & Company noted that widespread media coverage and soaring unicorn valuations created an artificial sense of urgency among corporate and banking executives fearing they would miss out on the trend.
Data from Artemis Analytics reveals that the stablecoin market recorded $400 billion in organic payment activity in 2025. McKinsey points out that this volume is negligible when measured against the quadrillion dollars moving through traditional global payment systems annually. Furthermore, the stablecoin ecosystem exhibits high centralization, with the vast majority of supply issued by just two companies: Tether and Circle. This stagnation challenges the prevailing assumption that stablecoins will serve as the default digital settlement asset or that other tokenized vehicles will grow in parallel with them.
In contrast, the actual migration of institutional capital is occurring via tokenized deposits. These flows are an order of magnitude larger than stablecoin volumes and are integrated directly into existing institutional payment, liquidity management, and corporate treasury workflows. Over a dozen tier-one financial institutions, including Citibank and BNY, have disclosed live deployments or pilot programs utilizing proprietary platforms. Notably, JPMorgan’s Kinexys network alone is estimated to process over $1 trillion in tokenized deposit transfers each year.
Meanwhile, tokenized central bank money, or central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), remains confined to experimental phases. Early initiatives in Canada, France, Singapore, and Switzerland have raised complex questions regarding monetary sovereignty and legal authority, indicating that widespread implementation will require significant legislative and regulatory overhauls. Industry analysts suggest it could be several years before CBDCs achieve ubiquity, even though they remain fundamentally necessary to achieve true finality in cross-border settlements.
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