Yield-bearing stablecoins tumble as treasury-backed tokens gain
Yield-bearing stablecoin supply fell more than $3.5 billion in Q2 2026 as crypto-native yield tokens contracted and treasury-backed stablecoins expanded, CEX.IO reports.
CEX.IO reported that yield-bearing stablecoin supply fell more than $3.5 billion in the second quarter of 2026, reversing nearly three years of quarterly growth. The category declined 15% during the quarter as crypto-native products shrank and Treasury-backed tokens expanded.
Ethena’s sUSDe lost about 52% of its supply, shedding nearly $2 billion, while Sky’s sUSDS declined roughly 16%. By contrast, Treasury-backed products rose: BlackRock’s BUIDL increased about 2%, Circle’s USYC gained nearly 16% and Ondo Finance’s USDY grew more than 66%.
Total stablecoin supply fell to $312 billion in Q2, and adjusted transaction volume declined 5.5%, marking the market’s first quarterly contraction since Q3 2023. In Q1 2026, total stablecoin supply had increased by roughly $8 billion to a record $315 billion, with yield-bearing tokens among the main growth drivers.
CEX.IO data show early signs of weakening demand in Q1: retail-sized transfers fell 16% while automated activity accounted for about 76% of stablecoin transaction volume. Those patterns continued in Q2. Total stablecoin transaction counts fell by 530 million to 4.48 billion, the largest quarterly drop on record. Transfers below $250 rose 5% to $19.39 billion.
Institutional data provider Talos identified three demand channels that weakened in Q2: declining stablecoin supply, spot Bitcoin ETF outflows, and slower corporate Bitcoin purchases. Tanay Ved, senior research associate at Talos, noted that a recovery in stablecoin supply would mean “fresh capital coming back into the ecosystem more broadly” and help support onchain liquidity. He also noted that spot ETF flows are the most important demand channel to watch because they tend to reflect durable shifts in institutional appetite, and that ETF flows, corporate Bitcoin purchases and stablecoin supply often move together when market momentum changes.
The quarter’s figures show a split within the stablecoin segment: several crypto-native yield tokens contracted sharply while products backed by short-term government securities attracted more capital.
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