Key Takeaways
- The U.S. became a net bitcoin importer for the first time since 2022, driven by transfers exceeding $10 million.
- Americans favor bitcoin as a store of value, while the rest of the world uses dollar-pegged stablecoins to access dollars.
- Bitcoin inflows depend on market conditions, but stablecoins help extend the dollar’s global influence.
The firm reached this conclusion by analyzing data for the year ending in June 2026.
“Transfers under $10,000 ran net outbound every period measured. But larger denomination transfers flip to net inflows, with the bracket above $10 million alone accounting for 53,200 [$4.3 billion] coins arriving,” the analysts said, without specifying the total net import figure or where U.S. retail BTC went. “Retail sends bitcoin out; institutions bring it in,” Chainalysis concluded.
The Role of Bitcoin ETFs
Bitcoin itself does not move anywhere, as it is essentially an entry in a ledger. Americans might be transferring the rights to access their assets to offshore exchanges, foreign peer-to-peer markets, or family members abroad. They might also be paying for goods and services, among other reasons. To evaluate BTC “import/export,” Chainalysis has relied largely on the web traffic of the crypto asset services involved.
The analysts don’t name the importers. Spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are unlikely to have been the main driver this time, as they posted $5.39 billion in net outflows in the first half of 2026, before rebounding. However, these funds have still played an important role over the longer term.
“Since the January 2024 launch of the spot bitcoin ETFs, the U.S. share of global bitcoin activity has consistently risen through every reporting period,” Chainalysis said, adding that a federal Strategic Bitcoin Reserve has also added “implicit sovereign demand” for BTC, even if it hasn’t bought any BTC.
Different Needs for Bitcoin and Stablecoins
At the same time, the U.S. supplies the world with USD-pegged stablecoins while importing bitcoin, showing how differently the world and Americans use these assets. However, the largest stablecoin by market capitalization, USDT, is issued by Tether, which is not a U.S. company. USD-pegged stablecoins are usually backed by U.S. government debt and other assets. In September, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco reported that stablecoin issuers’ Treasury holdings had jumped by more than $200 billion in five years, helping offset the decline in China’s holdings.
According to Chainalysis, the rest of the world is turning to stablecoins because they meet a need that American users don’t share: access to dollars without an American bank account. Americans, meanwhile, are more interested in BTC as a scarce store of value.
“Investor interest in bitcoin as a monetary alternative remains strong, particularly as government debt and spending reach new highs globally,” Will Su, managing director and head of digital assets research at Blackrock, was quoted as saying in the report.
The graph below illustrates this difference: a higher reading for an asset indicates that it plays a larger role in a region’s crypto asset activity. In the U.S., that asset is bitcoin; in the rest of the world, it is stablecoins. What’s more, the gap between the roles of the two asset types in the U.S. and the rest of the world has been widening since at least 2024.
Two Fronts and Two Trends
Hence, the U.S. is now active on both fronts. According to Chainalysis, the two trends differ in durability — institutional investors allocate capital to BTC depending on market conditions, while “exported” stablecoins help strengthen the dollar’s global influence. The European Central Bank has repeatedly cited the expansion of USD-pegged stablecoins as one of the main reasons for its digital euro project, the euro zone’s central bank digital currency.
According to Chainalysis data, dollar-pegged tokens account for 99.1% of stablecoin order book volume, while euro-pegged tokens account for just 0.45%.
