BIS Study Finds USDT Smart-Contract Share Fell Despite Supply Growth

The Bank for International Settlements published a working paper on Sept. 15, 2026, showing that smart-contract account holdings of USDT declined or stagnated on Ethereum and Tron even as total USDT issuance grew across both networks.

The BIS authors reconstructed USDT holder balances from transfer event logs on Ethereum and Tron, then identified smart-contract accounts by matching them against contract deployment records. On Ethereum, the share of USDT held by smart contracts fell from more than 20% during parts of 2021 and 2022 to between 15% and 20% by late 2024, then dropped further to between 10% and 15% after late 2024. On Tron, smart-contract holdings remained at roughly 1% throughout most of the study period.

In dollar terms, Ethereum’s contract-held USDT balance fluctuated in the low tens of billions, reaching approximately $10 billion to $15 billion toward the end of the study’s historical series. Tron contract-held USDT remained at approximately $1 billion or less. The BIS authors say the issuance growth did not bring a sustained increase in contract holdings.

Current Market Distribution

As of Sept. 28, USDT’s total market cap across all chains stood at $183.7 billion, according to a DefiLlama snapshot. Ethereum held $73.3 billion of that total, while Tron held $92.5 billion. The BIS study’s historical data does not extend to September 2026, so current holdings cannot be directly compared to the percentages the paper documents.

Distinction Between Share and Absolute Balance

The BIS data highlights a distinction between percentage decline and absolute dollar change. Contract-held USDT on Ethereum may have remained relatively stable in absolute terms while its share of total USDT fell because non-contract holdings grew faster. A smart contract may hold USDT for a bridge, wrapper, or custodian function rather than for DeFi lending or trading strategies. The BIS reconstruction tracks one token across addresses on two networks, including holdings outside specific DeFi applications, which differs from protocol-level TVL measures that assign assets to particular DeFi applications.

The working paper was published by the Bank for International Settlements, an international financial institution. Tether Limited issues USDT. CryptoSlate reported on the findings.