Amid steadily improving market sentiment, Ethereum’s native token, ETH, is up almost 13% in the first 15 days of 2026. Meanwhile, stablecoin activity is exploding, registering a 300% surge in active stablecoin addresses on a year-on-year (YoY) basis.
Active stablecoin addresses surge 300% in a year
According to a recent CryptoQuant post by oinonen_t, stablecoins are continuing their expansion into 2026. On a year-on-year (YoY) basis, the number of active stablecoin addresses has skyrocketed by 300%.
In absolute numbers, there were 150,000 active stablecoin addresses in January 2025, which has now increased to 600,000. According to oinonen_t, the rising adoption of dollar-pegged stablecoins comes from USD remaining the most dominant fiat currency.
Several favorable developments have helped grow the stablecoin market cap, including the approval of the US GENIUS Act, stablecoin integration with fintech platforms like Stripe, PayPal’s PYUSD, and tokenized asset settlement.
Binance exchange’s stablecoin reserves have climbed 45% from $33 billion in the summer of 2025 to $48 billion as of today. The climb in stablecoin reserves is likely to act as liquidity support, ready for deployment if the market remains bullish.
Will ETH react positively?
As mentioned earlier, ETH has risen by approximately 13% since the beginning of the year. The second-largest cryptocurrency by reported market cap is trading in the $3,300 range at the time of writing, more than a 100% increase from its macro bottom of $1,471 in April 2025.
Prominent crypto analyst Crypto GEMs shared their thoughts on ETH’s recent price action. The analyst shared the following ETH/BTC chart, showing how ETH is poised to witness parabolic price action in the coming months, which could propel its price to as high as 0.15 in BTC terms.
Similarly, seasoned crypto analyst and market commentator Michael van de Poppe expressed optimism in ETH’s price action. The analyst shared the following chart, stating that ETH holding above the 21-day moving average (MA) shows that appetite for risk is returning to the market.
Besides the price charts, the development side of things also indicates ETH’s growth. A record 8.7 million smart contracts were deployed on the Ethereum blockchain in the last quarter of 2025, confirming high developer interest in the smart contract platform.
