This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe. Business-to-business (B2B if you will) stablecoin transactions are gaining momentum, per a new report from Artemis, Dragonfly, and Castle Island Ventures. The report found that such payments are annualizing $36 billion, which is a step above the person-to-person (P2P) rate of $18 billion. Source: Stablecoin Payments From the Ground Up As you can see in the chart above, the volumes have really picked up on the B2B side of things, showing that the adoption that we’ve been talking about is being heavily reflected in data. Love to see it. The study noted that USDT wins the popularity contest in these payments, but USDC has roughly 30% of the monthly volume. “I kind of expected…that Circle would have done a little better than it has,” Dragonfly’s Rob Hadick told me. “The reality is, today, it’s still…between 80% and 90% Tether. There’s some indication that maybe Circle is gaining on the B2B side, but we haven’t seen that one in the data yet.” On the downside, though, it looks like P2P might be struggling a bit. You can see that volumes seemed to peak earlier this year, but haven’t quite bounced back, despite what is arguably a very bullish environment for stablecoins specifically. Hadick told me he was surprised to see the P2P market hit such a wall. He noted that WorldPay’s most recent report showed that account-to-account payments are trending higher and becoming the fastest-growing segment of payments worldwide. So his read was that P2P stablecoin volumes could get a boost from that, but clearly — as the data shows above — that’s not the case. On the other hand, he was thrilled to see that B2B payments are quickly growing. What stood out to me is that the smaller segment of business-to-consumer payments is also stagnating. As you can see above, it looks like B2C volume hit a high roughly around the same time as P2P before dropping. That’s not to discount the rise this year in volumes, which is focused on Binance Pay and Orbital. “Volume has increased substantially, rising from approximately $50 million per month at the start of 2023 to surpassing $300 million by early 2025. This growth highlights the expanding role of stablecoins in everyday digital commerce and service platforms,” the study said. Empire co-host Santiago Santos, in this week’s Round Up, noted that B2B versus B2C caught his eye.