Supply movement
Expanded
−
Contracted
=
Net movement
Daily Tape freezes this supply layer once a day from DDD-owned records.
What it is
What a stablecoin is
A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency built to hold a steady value against a reference asset, almost always the US dollar. The largest are USDT (Tether), USDC (Circle), and USDS (Sky), but the market is wider than a few names. DDD reads all of them as one pool of USD-pegged supply, not a coin-by-coin ledger.
Two ways
Two ways stablecoins move
Supply moves when dollars are created or destroyed. Settlement moves when existing dollars change hands. A single stablecoin can be sent many times without supply changing once.
Settlement movement
Existing stablecoins can move between wallets, apps, and chains without total supply changing.
Illustrative only. DDD Flow is not live and requires event-level transfer evidence.
Keeping these two apart is the whole point of this page. They answer different questions, they need different evidence, and only one of them is something DDD measures today.
The benchmark
What DDD measures
DDD measures how big that pool is next to the US dollar itself. It compares total USD-pegged stablecoin supply against U.S. M2, the Federal Reserve’s broad-money measure.
USD stablecoin supply
÷
U.S. M2
=
DDD%
The headline reads “1 in N dollars is a stablecoin” — for every $N of U.S. broad money, about $1 is on-chain USD stablecoin supply. DDD does not claim stablecoins are part of M2. The comparison shows relative size, nothing more.
Schematic only, not to scale
M2 is published monthly by the Federal Reserve via FRED. Between releases, DDD updates against the latest available value. The full formula, sources, and caveats live in the Methodology.
Three lenses
One supply, three lenses
The same pool of supply can be cut three ways. These are lenses on one number, not separate markets.
Issuer lens
Who created it
Supply split by the companies that mint and redeem each coin.
Chain lens
Where it sits
Supply split by the network it settles on. Location is not volume.
Currency lens
What it’s pegged to
Supply split by reference currency. Today that is almost entirely USD.
The daily record
What the Daily Tape records
Supply changes every day as coins are minted and burned. The Daily Tape freezes that change once a day and keeps it as a dated record.
Expanded
−
Contracted
=
Net
Around 12:00 UTC, DDD takes a fixed snapshot and saves it, dated and never recomputed after the fact. Each day is one record: how much supply expanded, how much contracted, and the net.
The Tape measures supply, meaning dollars created and destroyed. It does not measure how often they change hands. A single coin can be sent a thousand times without supply moving once.
One dated record per day. See the live records on the Daily Tape.
Why it’s citable
A number that won’t move
A live figure changes by the second. A benchmark you can cite needs a fixed point. Each dated record on the Daily Tape is frozen and never recomputed, so once you cite a date, the figure stays put after you publish.
Sources, formula, and caveats are documented in full on the Methodology.
See the live records on the Daily Tape · sources and caveats in the Methodology · definitions in Learn.