Stablecoins are settling more than $400 million every hour on average, and a disproportionate share of that traffic is moving when traditional banks are closed, according to a joint study by Coinbase and The Block. The findings put stablecoin rails among the busiest payment channels in crypto, even as regulators and banks continue to debate how the tokens should be supervised.
The study also projects that, if current growth holds, stablecoins will reach $1.5 trillion in quarterly adjusted transfer volume by the end of 2027. That's a forward-looking figure, not a current one — but it frames the size of the bet that issuers, exchanges, and payment firms are making on dollar-pegged tokens as settlement infrastructure rather than trading instruments.
Why off-hours activity stands out
The most striking detail in the Coinbase–The Block analysis is timing. Stablecoin transfers cluster outside conventional banking hours, when wire systems are down and settlement desks are dark. That's not a rounding error in the data — off-hours transfers dominate the volume, which suggests the tokens are being used for purposes that can't wait for the next business day.
For payment companies, remittance corridors, and crypto-native businesses, that's the whole point. A stablecoin transfer can clear on a weekend, a holiday, or at 3 a.m. in the sender's time zone. A bank wire can't, at least not without intermediaries and cut-off times. The study's numbers indicate that users are routing real activity through that gap in the traditional system, not just testing the plumbing.
The $1.5 trillion projection and its assumptions
The Coinbase–The Block forecast of $1.5 trillion in quarterly adjusted transfer volume by late 2027 depends on growth rates continuing at their current pace. Adjusted volume strips out some of the noise from internal transfers and wash activity, which makes the number a cleaner read on actual usage than raw on-chain volume. Even so, a projection two and a half years out is a projection — it assumes adoption keeps compounding and that no regulatory or market shock interrupts the trend.
The $400 million-per-hour figure is the more concrete data point. It describes what's happening now, and it's large enough that stablecoin flows are starting to be measured against traditional payment networks rather than against other crypto assets.
What the study doesn't settle
The findings come from Coinbase and The Block, two crypto-industry participants with a commercial interest in stablecoin adoption. The study doesn't resolve the open policy questions that have trailed the sector: how reserves should be audited, what happens to token holders in a issuer failure, and whether off-hours settlement activity should trigger additional reporting requirements.
Those questions are live in multiple jurisdictions. The study's data on off-hours dominance gives regulators a new angle — flows that bypass banking-hour oversight are exactly the kind of activity that draws scrutiny, even when the underlying transfers are legitimate.
What to watch next
The near-term test is whether the off-hours share holds as more traditional financial firms enter the space. If banks and payment processors start issuing their own stablecoins, the timing profile of transfers could shift. For now, the Coinbase–The Block data points to a simple pattern: stablecoin users aren't waiting for the banking day to start. The study's $1.5 trillion quarterly volume target by the end of 2027 is the number to track against future updates from the two firms.
