The non-USD Stablecoin Opportunity

Over the past 8 years, stablecoins have cemented their place as crypto’s most successful product outside of Bitcoin. USDT, the leading USD-denominated stablecoin, has grown from $13B in circulation in 2020 to $167B today, now representing nearly 60% of all stablecoins across blockchains. USD-denominated coins have dominated crypto trading, replacing volatile BTC/altcoin pairings with a stable medium of exchange. They’ve also found product-market fit in emerging markets, where people and businesses seek protection from rapidly devaluing local currencies. For example, the Turkish Lira and Nigerian Naira have lost 80% and 75% of their value against the USD over the past 5 years. Through OTC markets, USDT has become the cheapest and safest way to hold USD value for billions of people in the global south.

Yet despite this success, adoption has been heavily concentrated in USD — leaving a major opportunity for other currencies. While USD-denominated stables have been an undisputed success, other fiat denominations have struggled to achieve similar adoption. EURC, the leading Euro stablecoin issued by Circle, has only €219M in circulation today. However, major changes in government policy, institutional appetite, retail DeFi adoption, and a long-term trend of de-dollarisation will drive explosive growth in non-USD stablecoins over the coming years.

Improving Government Policy

While USDT and USDC benefited from a first-mover advantage when neither the products, policy, nor oversight existed, the $40B collapse of Terra’s UST in 2022 led to a freeze in stablecoin innovation and a global regulatory reset. Since then, the US passed the GENIUS Act, Europe rolled out stablecoin regulations under MiCA, and the UK regulator has allowed FCA registered BCP technologies to participate in the FCA  regulatory sandbox and issue and distribute tokenised GBP (tGBP) while preparing the official stablecoin regulation slated for late 2026.

Institutional Appetite & Global Trade

The passage of regulation has opened the doors for institutional adoption. Banking giants like JP Morgan and Standard Chartered have announced plans to launch their own stablecoins this year. Stripe acquired the stablecoin platform Bridge for $1.1B earlier in 2025. The key driver is instant settlement: while international transactions typically settle on a T+1 basis, stablecoin transfers are available to counterparties instantly. This dramatically accelerates global finance and trade, making stablecoins a no-brainer for settlement.

The next top four currencies outside the USD — EUR, JPY, GBP, and CNY — account for 42% of global trade, each representing more than $1T annually. In late 2024, Tether facilitated a $45M oil trade between a publicly traded super-major oil company and a top-tier commodity trader. The company also acquired a 70% stake in publicly-listed Adecoagrob, which produces dairy in Argentina, rice in Uruguay, and sugar and ethanol in Brazil. With this acquisition, Tether aims to bring more commodity trading settlement on-chain. With Europe and the UK among the largest trade partners for many commodity-producing nations, adoption of EUR and GBP stablecoins will naturally follow. Innovative startups like Better Payments Network and LINK are also building stablecoin rails that enable businesses to trade across leading currencies with instant settlement and built-in fiat on/off ramps.

Retail DeFi Adoption

Though it ended in collapse, crypto lending and yield platforms like BlockFi, Celsius, and Nexo grew into some of the industry’s largest companies by 2021. That growth came against the backdrop of DeFi’s first wave, but unfamiliar UX and poor scalability drove retail users toward opaque operators who ultimately failed.

Four years later, with the rise of performant L1s and L2s and a more favorable US regulatory environment, exchanges like Coinbase and Crypto.com are integrating DeFi protocols such as Morpho. Coinbase’s Morpho integration has already attracted $1.3B of cbBTC into lending pools — 65% of total issuance. As exchanges expand these features to their second-largest markets in the UK and EU, they will need GBP- and EUR-denominated stablecoin pools to avoid exposing users to USD currency risk on their loans.

De-Dollarisation

While the USD remains dominant in global trade and finance, a multipolar world is pushing countries and companies to reduce reliance on it. The BRICS alliance continues to push non-USD trade, tariff disputes have accelerated diversification, and the swelling US deficit is pushing others to hedge. The DXY, which tracks USD strength against a currency basket, is down 14% from its 10-year high. Gold is up more than 40% over the past year, while gold-pegged tokens like XAUT and PAXG have more than doubled in market cap.

This momentum is spilling into crypto. As more companies move on-chain with commitments in GBP and EUR, they cannot afford to keep all capital in USD-denominated stablecoins.

Conclusion

With regulation maturing, institutional adoption accelerating, retail DeFi going mainstream, and global de-dollarisation underway, the stage is set for explosive growth in non-USD stablecoins. We expect GBP and EUR stablecoins to lead the next wave of adoption, given their role as two of the world’s most traded currencies.

tGBP stands as the only fully backed digital pound issued by an FCA-registered entity that has successfully passed the FCA’s regulatory sandbox. It is already live on exchanges including Wirex Exchange with over 6m users and deployed across leading chains such as Ethereum, Base, Polygon and Solana. As GBP adoption expands on-chain, tGBP is uniquely positioned to lead as no regulated competitors are expected to issue by 2027 prior to the official UK stablecoin regulation.