Sui Stablecoin Market Cap Falls 56% as CEO Hits Back

High attention and emotional sentiment detected.

The clash pits two ways of judging a blockchain against each other. One side tracks how much stablecoin value sits parked on a chain. Cheng, instead, points to how fast that money actually moves.

What Evan Cheng Said

Cheng made the remark on X, where he leads the team behind Sui. He argued that some chains carry a stablecoin supply worth about 10 times their total value locked. Yet their transaction volume stays very low.

According to Cheng, those chains are “paid parking lots” for idle money. The post that set him off came from analyst @ToreroRomero earlier the same day. It showed the Sui stablecoin market cap falling 56% while rival chains grew.

Cheng leaned into the contrast across his replies. He framed Sui as a payments rail where stablecoins keep working, not resting. In his telling, rivals subsidize parked capital through yield, while Sui chases real usage instead.

Sui Stablecoin Market Cap Sinks to $472 Million

Sui’s stablecoin supply now sits at $472.54 million, according to DefiLlama. USDC leads with about $292 million. Smaller tokens such as suiUSDe, FDUSD, and BUCK fill out the rest.

Circle’s native USDC arrived on Sui in October 2024 and still anchors the supply today. Native USDT, by contrast, barely registers at around $14 million. So Sui leans heavily on a single issuer for its stablecoin base.

A year ago the picture looked very different. A May 2025 snapshot showed roughly $918 million in stablecoins on Sui. So the recent slide erases a large share of that peak.

Messari’s State of Sui report pegged the figure near $483.6 million for late 2025. That number was still up year over year at the time. Now the trend points lower.

Why Velocity Is Sui’s Real Argument

Cheng’s defense rests on one number: velocity. Sui processed about $65 billion in stablecoin transfers over a five to six day window in mid-June. Meanwhile, the supply behind those transfers stayed near $470 million.

That gap is the whole point. A small pool of stablecoins changed hands many times in just days. So Sui frames its chain as money in motion, not money sitting still.

The surge followed a May 20 upgrade that scrapped gas fees on supported stablecoin transfers. Fireblocks backed the launch. After it shipped, transfer volume spiked sharply.

Cumulative numbers tell a similar story. Sui says stablecoin transfers passed $1 trillion since August 2025. CertiK Skynet puts the running total even higher, above $2.27 trillion since early 2024.

Market Cap and Velocity, Explained

Stablecoin market cap measures total supply parked on a chain. It signals liquidity depth and the collateral available for lending. Higher numbers suggest more reserves on hand.

Velocity measures movement instead. The formula divides transfer volume by average supply over a period. A high result means the same dollars turn over again and again.

Sui’s recent burst shows the math in action. Roughly $65 billion moved across just $470 million in supply. So each dollar cycled through the chain dozens of times in under a week.

Both metrics matter, yet they tell different stories. For comparison, Ethereum holds $156.8 billion in stablecoins and Tron holds $89.9 billion. Their supplies dwarf Sui, though much of that capital moves slowly. Tron in particular fits the high-supply profile Cheng described.

Skeptics Question the Volume

Not everyone buys the velocity pitch. Critics on X asked whether the $65 billion reflects real payments or circular bot activity. One joked about traders “playing ping-pong” with USDC all day.

Others noted that Sui still lacks meaningful native USDT. They argued that market cap remains a fair gauge of lending depth and trust. So the debate stays wide open.

The cause of the supply decline is also unclear. Expiring incentive programs, redemptions, or migration to higher-yield chains could each play a role. No one has confirmed a single reason yet.

What Comes Next for Sui

The story is only hours old, and major outlets have not weighed in yet. For now, the fight plays out on X rather than in research notes. Still, the metric debate is unlikely to fade soon.

Sui’s own DeFi total value locked has slipped to about $432 million. So its stablecoin supply now sits above its TVL, the very pattern Cheng criticized in rivals. Plenty of observers noticed that irony.

Traders will watch whether the velocity story lifts SUI, which recently changed hands near $0.72. None of this is financial advice. As always, check on-chain data yourself before acting on any single metric.