USDT Issuance Outpaces Smart-Contract Holdings on Ethereum

A recent Bank for International Settlements working paper published in September 2026 analyzed USDT holdings on Ethereum and Tron. The study found that while more USDT was issued, smart-contract accounts on Ethereum held a lower share of the token's supply as issuance expanded.

According to the BIS data, Ethereum's contract-held share of USDT fell from around 20% in 2021-2022 to roughly 10-15% by late 2024. Tron's contract-held share hovered near 1% throughout most of the study's historical series.

The researchers reconstructed USDT holdings from transfer event logs on both networks, identifying smart-contract accounts and classifying other addresses as externally owned. The study found that newly issued tokens accumulated outside contracts, leading to a lower proportion of tokens in contracts without a comparable increase in absolute balances.