Stablecoins Eye $1T in T-Bills by 2028, Standard Chartered Predicts
Stablecoins Set to Scoop Up $1T in T-Bills by 2028: Standard Chartered
Standard Chartered has projected that stablecoin issuers could hold up to $1 trillion in U.S. Treasury bills by 2028, underscoring how quickly stablecoins are becoming a meaningful buyer of short-term government debt.
The estimate links the rapid growth of dollar-pegged stablecoins to their most common reserve strategy: backing tokens with highly liquid, dollar-denominated assets such as U.S. T-bills. As stablecoin circulation expands, issuers typically need to increase reserves, which can translate into larger allocations to short-dated Treasuries.
The forecast matters because it places stablecoin providers—private-sector crypto firms—in a role traditionally dominated by banks, money market funds, and foreign official institutions. Large and growing stablecoin demand for T-bills could affect how market participants think about liquidity in the Treasury market and the distribution of major buyers, especially at the short end of the yield curve.
In broader context, stablecoins have become core infrastructure for crypto trading and on-chain payments, offering a way to move and store value in tokens designed to track the U.S. dollar. Their reserve management practices, and the quality and transparency of those reserves, have also been a central focus for policymakers and regulators, given the potential spillovers into traditional financial markets.
Standard Chartered’s projection highlights that the intersection between crypto markets and U.S. government debt is likely to deepen, with stablecoin reserve portfolios increasingly relevant beyond the digital asset sector.
