How much money flows into crypto each month?

There’s the headline figure $1.7T which is the aggregate market cap of crypto. But how about the volumes of US dollars being exchanged into crypto each month? Sometimes this is called fund flows.

I’ve learned calculating this figure is tricky because there’s no centralized reporting for it. But we can get a sense of it via stablecoin minting patterns.

Stablecoins are tokens that are backed by a fiat currency. Each time a marginal dollar buys a stablecoin, a new stablecoin must be minted. Sometimes these stablecoins are burned (destroyed). The net amount of stablecoin creation over time should provide us a directional sense of dollar flow.

For this analysis, I’m looking at Ethereum based stablecoins since 2020 by month.

Over the past two years, stablecoin value increased from a few billion to more than $114b. The summer of 2021 witnessed the steepest growth from $35b to nearly $70b. Since then, stablecoin net minting has doubled.

This chart shows the monthly growth rate of stablecoins, by quarter. In the first quarter of 2020, the typical net minting rate reached 32% per month. In the most recent quarter, the figure is at 5%. That 5% compounded over twelve months implies an 80% growth rate per year for a $114b asset class. Pretty impressive.

The total US money supply, which includes physical cash, traveler’s checks, deposits, and all other forms of money has surged to about $20.5T.

If stablecoins continue their 5% monthly growth for the next 12 months, they would comprise 1% of the total US dollar money supply.

This analysis is a back-of-the-envelope assessment of stablecoin creation, not a precise attestation. Very roughly, it’s about $5b per month, growing at 5% per month.

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1. Total stablecoin value reported in CoinGecko, TokenTerminal and others will reflect a value of about $177b. The numbers above only include Ethereum based stablecoins. For example, Tether has $77b its stablecoin extant, but 50% resides on Tron.
2. This analysis ignores other stablecoin/currency pairs (eg, GBP, JPY)
3. Thanks to Fredrik of Dune for helping me with this analysis.