The United States became a net inflow market for Bitcoin in 2026, the first time since 2022, according to Chainalysis’ Wednesday report, "North America: The Inside Story of the Growth of Agentic Commerce."
Chainalysis said the data shows institutions have continued buying Bitcoin this year, while retail investors as a group have been selling.
The report says dollar-backed stablecoins give people without U.S. bank accounts a way to hold dollars. Americans already have access to dollar accounts, so other parts of the world are turning to digital dollars, while people in the U.S. are relying more on Bitcoin as a scarce store of value.
Chainalysis also said the U.S. share of global Bitcoin activity has risen in every reporting period since spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds launched in 2024. Even though the U.S. crypto economy, valued at $2.78 trillion, contracted 2.2% during the bear market, it still held on to most of the nearly doubled gains seen in 2025.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved Bitcoin ETFs in January 2024 after rejecting such products for a decade. According to the report, those funds—managed by Wall Street firms including BlackRock, Fidelity, and more recently Morgan Stanley—posted the most successful launches in ETF history.
The report also says stablecoins have turned U.S. debt into the preferred currency base for peer-to-peer economies and cross-border businesses. In 2026, stablecoins continued moving into new use cases, mainly outside the U.S., generating billions of dollars in economic activity for American companies and the U.S. government.
Chainalysis added that since Donald Trump took office as president, multiple laws and executive orders supporting the crypto industry have been signed. Among them was the GENIUS Act, signed in 2025, which allows banks and other entities to issue stablecoins as long as they are backed by assets such as U.S. Treasuries and disclose reserves on a monthly basis.