A stablecoin network’s share of on-chain transfers did not reliably predict its share of merchant receipts, according to a Glassnode and NOWPayments study reported by TechFlow on November 11, 2026, at 09:55:31 UTC+8. The study compared USDT and USDC transfers with payments received through NOWPayments merchant checkouts—not with all stablecoin commerce.
From September 2025 through September 2026, USDC on Base accounted for 45.2% of the measured on-chain USDT and USDC transfer value, but just 0.6% of NOWPayments merchant receipts. USDT on Tron and BNB Chain showed the reverse pattern: together, they represented 14% of transfer value and 75% of merchant receipt value. Adding Ethereum USDT brought those three channels’ share of merchant receipts to 86%. By contrast, the three largest channels by on-chain transfer value—Base USDC, Ethereum USDC and Tron USDT—accounted for 54% of merchant receipts.
Payment timing also differed from broader chain activity. Across 39 complete weeks of hourly data through October 4, 2026, merchant receipt counts on the principal channels generally peaked between 19:00 and 21:00 UTC, several hours after the peak in active on-chain addresses, the report said.
For scale, the report put total stablecoin supply at $303 billion as of October 5, 2026, including $184 billion in USDT and $74 billion in USDC. It reported a 30-day average of $207 billion in daily stablecoin transfer value, compared with $5.1 billion for Bitcoin and $2.7 billion for Ethereum under its stated comparison. Transfer value measures movement on-chain; it does not establish how much was spent at merchant checkouts. These figures describe circulation and payment activity, not the quality of issuer reserves or the terms of redemption.
Original report, published November 11, 2026, at 09:55:31 UTC+8.
