An empirical analysis of cross-border Bitcoin, Ether and stablecoin flows
The BIS published the results of an empirical investigation of trends and drivers of cross-border flows of Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC) between 184 countries from 2017 to 2024. These flows are substantial, peaking at around $2.6 trillion in 2021, with the two stablecoins (USDT and USDC) accounting for close to half the volume. The unique bilateral data allow for the estimation the drivers of these flows in a gravity framework, and how they differ across different types of crypto-assets. The findings highlight speculative motives and global funding conditions as key drivers of native crypto-asset flows. Transactional motives play a significant role in cross-border flows for stablecoins and low-value BTC transactions, where a strong association with higher costs of traditional remittances is found.