Stablecoin weekly: Big-3 falls $945.1M as USDC sheds $891.0M (2026)

The aggregate circulating supply of the three largest stablecoins fell $945.1M over the seven days ending September 16, 2026 at 08:00 (UTC−05:00), to $261.776B 1. It is the first weekly contraction this report series has recorded since August 19, and it ends three straight weeks of expansion.

USDC supplied $891.0M of that decline. USDT fell $47.6M worldwide, and DAI $6.5M 1. The near-flat USDT figure conceals the week's largest chain-level shift: $419.7M of USDT left Solana while $356.0M arrived on Tron and $190.8M on Ethereum 1.

Big-3 aggregate supply movements

Asset	Current supply	Previous-week supply	7-day change	Change
USDT	$183.256B	$183.303B	−$47.6M	−0.03%
USDC	$73.734B	$74.625B	−$891.0M	−1.19%
DAI	$4.786B	$4.792B	−$6.5M	−0.14%
Total Big-3	$261.776B	$262.721B	−$945.1M	−0.36%

DeFiLlama's asset-level response supplies the current and previous-week values for all three assets 1.

USDC moved 1.19% against USDT's 0.03%, so the aggregate change is a USDC change. Over 30 days the same source still shows the Big-3 $2.046B larger, with USDC up $1.773B, USDT up $257.7M and DAI up $15.4M 1. One week of contraction sits inside a month of expansion.

Chain-level supply distribution

A chain balance records where a stablecoin sits at the moment of the snapshot. Each of the three tables below carries the same nine named chains plus one residual row, and each is ordered by the size of its weekly change.

USDT

Chain	Current supply	Previous-week supply	7-day change
Solana	$2.344B	$2.764B	−$419.7M
Tron	$92.581B	$92.226B	+$356.0M
Ethereum	$73.603B	$73.412B	+$190.8M
Other chains	$3.620B	$3.710B	−$90.0M
Avalanche	$291.8M	$341.8M	−$50.0M
Polygon	$740.6M	$768.8M	−$28.2M
Arbitrum	$811.2M	$817.7M	−$6.5M
BSC	$9.178B	$9.178B	+$79K
Hyperliquid L1	$85.5M	$85.5M	−$31K
Base	Not reported by source	Not reported by source	Not reported by source

The nine named chains gained $42.4M between them while the residual bucket lost $90.0M, and the difference is the $47.6M global decline. Tether issues natively on Tron, Ethereum and Solana, so a chain balance is an endpoint record rather than a bridge route, and Tron's gain carries no information about which chain the money left.

USDC

Chain	Current supply	Previous-week supply	7-day change
Arbitrum	$2.323B	$2.704B	−$380.9M
Solana	$6.833B	$7.179B	−$346.0M
Ethereum	$46.539B	$46.734B	−$194.7M
Hyperliquid L1	$6.733B	$6.909B	−$176.3M
Polygon	$1.651B	$1.816B	−$165.0M
Other chains	$3.382B	$2.957B	+$425.3M
Base	$4.253B	$4.298B	−$45.0M
BSC	$1.581B	$1.589B	−$7.1M
Avalanche	$410.9M	$412.1M	−$1.2M
Tron	$27.9M	$27.9M	−$1K

USDC declined on all nine named chains, which lost $1.316B between them, and the residual bucket gained $425.3M; the two together produce the $891.0M global decline. A contraction of that size spread across nine chains alongside a $425.3M gain in the smaller chains is one net decline and one redistribution, and a seven-day endpoint comparison separates neither.

DAI

Chain	Current supply	Previous-week supply	7-day change
Ethereum	$4.158B	$4.169B	−$10.7M
Polygon	$496.6M	$492.4M	+$4.2M
Other chains	$73.4M	$73.7M	−$311K
Arbitrum	$15.5M	$15.2M	+$271K
Solana	$510.3K	$510.3K	+$0
BSC	$31.1M	$31.1M	+$0
Avalanche	$10.8M	$10.8M	+$0
Tron	Not reported by source	Not reported by source	Not reported by source
Base	Not reported by source	Not reported by source	Not reported by source
Hyperliquid L1	Not reported by source	Not reported by source	Not reported by source

DAI's $6.5M weekly move is smaller than several of its own chain lines, which is what a stable, Ethereum-anchored float looks like from week to week. Source for all three chain tables: 1.

Bridge-received supply

The same endpoint separates each chain's balance into the portion issued natively there and the portion that arrived over a bridge. Summing the bridge-received side gives the stablecoin float that sits behind a wrapped or bridged representation.

Asset	Bridge-received, Sep 16	Bridge-received, Sep 9	7-day change
USDT	$12.753B	$12.845B	−$92.0M
USDC	$3.892B	$3.919B	−$26.6M
DAI	$627.1M	$623.8M	+$3.3M
Total Big-3	$17.272B	$17.387B	−$115.2M

The largest single-chain moves inside that total:

Asset	Chain	Sep 9	Sep 16	Change
USDT	Plasma	$688.0M	$627.2M	−$60.9M
USDT	Polygon	$769.9M	$741.8M	−$28.1M
USDC	Hyperliquid L1	$463.1M	$441.1M	−$21.9M
USDT	Arbitrum	$818.3M	$811.1M	−$7.1M
USDT	OP Mainnet	$238.7M	$250.6M	+$12.0M
USDC	Polygon	$1,024.4M	$1,031.7M	+$7.3M

Source for both tables: 1.

Bridge-received float fell 0.66%, against 0.36% for total supply, so the bridge-carried share of the market shrank faster than the market did. The endpoint records how much arrived over a bridge and stays silent on which bridge carried it or which chain it left, so these figures describe a stock of bridge-carried float rather than a set of transfers.

Verified issuer and large-wallet events

Whale Alert describes its feed as live reporting on large on-chain transactions as they happen, and this table holds its alerts that fall inside the reporting window once converted to UTC−05:00. It is a record of identified large events rather than a complete issuance ledger.

Asset	Amount and action	Chain	Local time	Entity / details
USDC	268.0M transferred from Coinbase Institutional to Coinbase 2	Ethereum	Sep 9, 09:51	Exchange internal move
USDC	250.0M minted at USDC Treasury 3	Solana	Sep 9, 14:34	Circle Treasury
USDT	500.0M transferred from Binance to Tether Treasury 4	Ethereum	Sep 11, 08:25	Rotation, leg 1
USDT	500.0M transferred from Tether Treasury to Binance 5	Tron	Sep 11, 08:37	Rotation, leg 2
USDT	110.0M transferred from Tether Treasury to unknown wallet 6	Tron	Sep 11, 08:50	Unlabeled recipient
USDT	157.2M transferred from unknown wallet to Binance 7	Solana	Sep 11, 20:42	Exchange deposit
USDC	110.8M minted at USDC Treasury 8	Ethereum	Sep 12, 08:26	Circle Treasury
USDC	170.8M transferred from USDC Treasury to Kraken 9	Ethereum	Sep 12, 08:27	Exchange deposit
USDC	106.2M burned at USDC Treasury 10	Ethereum	Sep 15, 12:19	Circle Treasury
USDC	192.4M burned at USDC Treasury 11	Ethereum	Sep 15, 19:24	Circle Treasury
USDT	110.0M transferred from Tether Treasury to Bitfinex 12	Ethereum	Sep 15, 20:20	Exchange deposit

The 500.0M USDT pair on September 11 moved from Binance on Ethereum at 08:25 and back to Binance on Tron twelve minutes later, which is a network change on the way to the same venue. The two Tether Treasury transfers to Bitfinex and to an unlabeled Tron wallet, 220.0M in total, are the week's largest issuer-to-venue and issuer-to-unlabeled movements.

Whale Alert also carried at least eleven further 250.0M USDC mints at the USDC Treasury on Solana between September 9 and September 15, at least $2,750.0M in total and more than three times the weekly pace recorded in last week's edition 13 14 15. Solana's circulating USDC fell $346.0M over the same seven days. The alert feed's mint record has no burn record of comparable completeness to match it, so the two directions cannot be netted here.

The most regular large-wallet pattern of the week ran on Ethereum. On seven consecutive nights, from September 9 through September 15, a single unlabeled address received 143.0M to 193.4M USDC from Aave and returned the same amount to Aave about 35 minutes later 16 17. The round trip grew across the week, from 143.0M on September 9 to 191.0M on September 15, and the net position ended where it started on each of the seven nights. Whale Alert labels the counterparty "Unknown Whale 1", so the operator is unidentified.

Exchange balances as a buying-power proxy

Stablecoin float held in exchange wallets is the part of the supply that can be spent on a position without moving between chains first. The venue balances below come from wallet sets DefiLlama tracks and publishes, averaged across each of the two weeks so that a single day's wallet update does not drive the comparison.

Coinbase and Kraken sit outside every tracked wallet set reachable here, so the aggregates below understate the stablecoin balances held across exchanges as a group.

Venue	This-week average	Prior-week average	Change	Series
Binance	$49.284B	$49.033B	+$250.7M	Stable
OKX	$9.937B	$9.941B	−$4.1M	Stable
Bybit	$3.679B	$4.495B	−$815.9M	Volatile
MEXC	$2.113B	$2.108B	+$5.1M	Stable
KuCoin	$961M	$1,032M	−$70.9M	Mixed
Bitget	$871M	$976M	−$104.9M	Volatile
Gate	$323M	$317M	+$6.1M	Mixed
Bitfinex	$290M	$428M	−$137.9M	Volatile
Crypto.com	$175M	$215M	−$39.6M	Volatile
All 14 tracked venues	$67.805B	$68.692B	−$887.5M	—
Venues with stable series	$61.437B	$61.188B	+$249.2M	—

Venue sources: 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27.

The two aggregates disagree because of three venues. Bybit's tracked balance swings more than $1.5B between consecutive days, Bitfinex's by about 60% of its level, and Bitget's by about a quarter, which is what wallets entering and leaving a tracked set look like rather than money arriving and leaving. Restricted to the six venues whose daily readings stay within 5% of their level, USDT rose to $51.222B from $50.821B and USDC slipped to $10.212B from $10.364B, a $249.2M increase overall 18 19 21. On the venues that can be read cleanly, buying power parked on exchanges held flat while total supply contracted, and USDT was the asset that grew there.

Market cross-check

Asset / indicator	Snapshot	Change
BTC	$75,793.72 28	−4.06% over 7 days; −0.93% over 24 hours
ETH	$2,403.98 29	−3.96% over 7 days; −2.02% over 24 hours
Crypto Fear & Greed	51, Neutral 30	66, Greed on September 9

Bitcoin fell 4.06% and Ethereum 3.96% across the same seven days the stablecoin float contracted, and the sentiment index moved from Greed to Neutral. Supply, price and sentiment all moved the same way over the week.

What the snapshot establishes

The Big-3 contracted for the first time since August 19. The base fell $945.1M to $261.776B after three weeks of expansion 1.
USDC carried the move. USDC lost $891.0M, or 94.3% of the net decline, while USDT moved 0.03% 1.
USDT rotated rather than shrank. A $47.6M global decline contained a $419.7M Solana outflow against $356.0M into Tron and $190.8M into Ethereum 1.
Circle minted heavily on Solana. At least $2,750.0M of 250.0M USDC mints arrived there while Solana's USDC balance fell $346.0M 13.
Exchange buying power held flat on the venues that can be read. The six venues with stable wallet sets were up $249.2M, with USDT up $400.9M and USDC down $151.8M 18.
Bridge-carried float shrank faster than the market. Bridge-received supply fell 0.66% to $17.272B, against 0.36% for total supply 1.

Three dimensions stay unresolved:

Bridge route flows. DefiLlama's free bridge endpoints answer with a paid-plan prompt, and the public bridge-volume routes reachable this week either report one protocol's own emitter statistics or accept no date range, so pair-by-pair USDT, USDC and DAI bridge netflows for the window remain unmeasured. The bridge-received stock by chain above is what the available data supports.
Exchange coverage. Coinbase and Kraken sit outside the tracked wallet sets, so no market-wide total for exchange-held stablecoin balances can be stated.
Gross issuance. No public ledger covers every USDC or USDT mint and burn, so the observed mint events cannot be reconciled against the $891.0M net USDC decline.

Method note: supply figures come from DeFiLlama's asset and chain snapshots taken at 2026-09-16 08:00 (UTC−05:00). Other chains is the residual of DeFiLlama's full chain list after Ethereum, Tron, Arbitrum, Solana, Polygon, Base, Avalanche, BSC and Hyperliquid L1; a chain the source does not report is marked as such rather than given a value. DeFiLlama restated its September 9 baseline by +$189.0M after last week's edition, so week-over-week figures here come from one same-moment pull and differ slightly from the levels printed a week ago. Exchange balances average each venue's daily readings across the two weeks, using wallet sets the venue or its proof-of-reserve disclosures publish; a venue counts as stable when its daily readings stay within 5% of their level over the past 14 days. Issuer and wallet events come from Whale Alert's public alerts and are treated as inventory or routing evidence. Market figures use the linked public APIs. All times are UTC−05:00.

For informational use only; this report offers no investment advice.