Crypto’s ‘Zero Utility’ Claim Breaks on Stablecoins—but Speculation Endures

The latest available evidence does not support the sweeping claim that cryptocurrency has no utility or active retail market. Chainalysis’s 2025 adoption data show that Asia-Pacific on-chain value received rose 69% year over year to $2.36 trillion in the 12 months ending June 2025, while its index separately measured retail-sized transfers below $10,000. That is activity, not proof that every participant is a newcomer, but it is incompatible with the idea of a completely deserted retail market.

Nor does “zero utility” survive contact with the stablecoin economy. Visa’s current on-chain analysis reports $10.2 trillion in adjusted stablecoin transaction volume over the preceding 12 months, after filtering activity such as high-frequency bots and exchange treasury rebalancing. The same analysis identifies cross-border money movement and dollar-denominated savings as emerging uses, while acknowledging that limited merchant acceptance still constrains everyday payments.

The retail market is active, but “new users” remain hard to count

Retail participation and retail recruitment are not the same metric. Public blockchains reveal addresses and transfers, while exchanges can count customers on their own platforms, but neither an address nor a small transaction necessarily represents a distinct person. One customer may control several wallets; a custodial address may represent many customers; automated systems can generate large numbers of transfers.

This makes the assertion that there are “no fresh buyers” impossible to establish from market-wide address or volume data alone. It also means that rising activity should not automatically be interpreted as millions of first-time investors. The defensible conclusion is narrower: retail demand persists, but public evidence does not cleanly separate new entrants from returning traders, existing holders or automated activity.

One large exchange’s results provide a useful check on claims of total retail withdrawal. Coinbase’s first-quarter 2026 results say trailing-12-month derivatives volume increased 169% year over year and retail derivatives exceeded $200 million in annualized revenue. These are company-reported figures from one platform, and revenue is not a user count, but they demonstrate commercially meaningful consumer trading rather than an absolute retail blackout.

Stablecoins are the clearest exception to the utility critique

Stablecoins have a straightforward function: they represent fiat-denominated value on blockchain networks. Traders use them as settlement assets, but businesses and individuals can also use them to hold dollar exposure or transfer funds without moving through conventional correspondent-banking chains at every step. That does not make every stablecoin safe, universally accepted or equivalent to an insured bank deposit.

The distinction between raw and adjusted volume is essential. On-chain totals can be inflated by bots, internal exchange movements, smart-contract operations and repeated transfers that do not resemble a customer paying a merchant. Filtering those transactions sharply reduces the headline number, yet the remaining measured volume is still substantial enough to disprove the claim that blockchain networks facilitate no economically meaningful activity.

At the same time, stablecoin success does not validate the entire crypto market. Much of their demand reflects access to an existing product—the US dollar—rather than demand for a new decentralized currency. Their strongest applications may therefore say more about gaps in cross-border banking, currency access and round-the-clock settlement than about the usefulness of thousands of unrelated tokens.

Where the criticism still lands

The strongest version of the market critique is not that every crypto asset is useless. It is that utility is highly concentrated, while a long tail of tokens depends primarily on exchange liquidity, promotional attention and expectations of resale. A network can process transactions without its token acquiring durable demand outside speculation.

Market capitalization is especially weak evidence of utility for thinly traded assets. Multiplying the latest token price by total supply produces a valuation, but it does not show that the full supply could be sold near that price. Limited circulating supply and shallow order books can create impressive nominal values without demonstrating broad economic use.

Trading volume also needs context. High turnover can reflect genuine demand, but it can also arise from leverage, arbitrage, market making or repeated movement between venues. A useful assessment therefore asks what users obtain beyond exposure to price changes: settlement, savings access, credit, ownership rights, computing resources, identity services or another service that people would still purchase if speculative returns disappeared.

A market split between working rails and speculative inventory

The evidence points to a divided market rather than a single verdict on “crypto.” Stablecoins and some settlement infrastructure process measurable economic activity. Bitcoin and major trading products retain substantial investor demand. Beyond those areas, many tokens still face the harder test of demonstrating recurring users, revenue or services that do not depend on rising token prices.

This split also explains why aggregate adoption figures can coexist with weak prospects for individual projects. Growth in stablecoin transfers, exchange trading or a handful of major assets does not distribute value evenly across every blockchain and token. New activity can concentrate in established networks while illiquid projects continue to lose users and relevance.

The practical conclusion is less dramatic but more demanding than predicting either extinction or universal adoption. Claims of “no utility” and “no retail” are contradicted or left unproven by current data. The underlying concern remains valid, however: outside a limited group of payment, settlement and investment uses, much of the market still needs speculation to supply the demand that a functioning product would ordinarily earn.

Also read:

• Part 3. The Illusion of Value: Why 90% of Crypto Projects Have Billion-Dollar Market Caps But Almost Zero Traffic and Revenue
• The Crypto Market Is Dead: No Retail Buyers Left, Faith Is Gone, and 6,000 Out of 8,000 Projects Are Pure Scams
• No One Is Talking About It, But the Crypto Market Is in the Longest and Harshest Crypto Winter Ever