Index · Crypto & Web3 Communications · EPR Crypto & Web3 pillar. Methodology: 5W AI Communications Citation Index · Dataset: 50 buyer prompts × 5 engines × 3 reads · 750 observations · May 12 – June 6, 2026.
Ask a chatbox which stablecoin to hold and the answer is not a coin flip. It is a ranking. Across 750 observations spanning ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, three stablecoins capture the majority of citations — and a long tail of the other seven splits the remainder.
This is the inaugural Stablecoin Citation Share Index — the first ranked reading of which stablecoins the AI engines actually cite when buyers ask the question. It is built on the locked 5W AI Communications Citation Index formula. Repeatable. Defensible. Re-run quarterly.
Headline finding: USDC owns the regulated-stablecoin frame. USDT owns scale. PYUSD owns retail brand. Everything else fights for the long tail.
The Citation Share Leaderboard
Citation Share = each stablecoin's share of total branded mentions across the 750-observation dataset. Index Score = weighted composite of frequency, cross-engine breadth, query-type breadth, extractability, and crawl access. Higher score = the chatbox is more likely to surface this stablecoin, across more engines, on more buyer questions, in a more cite-ready format.
| Rank | Stablecoin | Issuer | Citation Share | Index Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | USDC | Circle | 23.8% | 87.4 |
| 2 | USDT | Tether | 21.4% | 81.2 |
| 3 | PYUSD | PayPal | 12.6% | 71.8 |
| 4 | DAI | MakerDAO / Sky | 9.7% | 68.5 |
| 5 | RLUSD | Ripple | 7.1% | 58.3 |
| 6 | FDUSD | First Digital Labs | 5.8% | 52.1 |
| 7 | USDe | Ethena | 5.2% | 49.7 |
| 8 | USDP | Paxos | 5.1% | 44.6 |
| 9 | TUSD | TrueUSD / Techteryx | 4.6% | 41.2 |
| 10 | GUSD | Gemini | 4.7% | 38.4 |
Read the gap. USDC and USDT together hold 45.2% of all citations. Add PYUSD and three names capture 57.8% — meaning seven stablecoins fight over the remaining 42%. The chatbox treats this like a top-three category.
Methodology
The 5W AI Communications Citation Index is a locked, published scoring formula. Every Index in this franchise — Stablecoins, Neobanks, Payments, BNPL, and the verticals beyond — uses the same five dimensions in the same weights. The point is comparability across time and category.
| Dimension | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Citation Frequency | 40% | How often the stablecoin is named in an engine's answer to a relevant buyer prompt. |
| Cross-Engine Breadth | 20% | How many of the five engines cite it. A stablecoin loved only by ChatGPT scores lower than one cited everywhere. |
| Query-Type Breadth | 20% | Range of buyer intents covered — safety, yield, payments, institutional use, regulation. |
| Extractability | 15% | Whether the engine returns clean, structured facts (reserves, market cap, issuer) versus vague descriptions. |
| Crawl Access | 5% | Whether the issuer's primary domains are indexed, robots-accessible, and structured for retrieval. |
Engines tested
ChatGPT (GPT-5 default), Claude (Opus 4.7), Google Gemini (2.5 Pro), Perplexity (Sonar default), Google AI Overviews. Each engine queried via a fresh, logged-out session. Each prompt run three times on different days to control for variance.
Prompt set
Fifty buyer prompts grouped into five intents — safety and trust, yield and DeFi use, payments and remittance, institutional and treasury use, regulation and compliance. Prompts are written the way buyers actually ask. No jargon-stuffed retrieval bait.
Scoring
Every mention of a stablecoin in an engine response is scored. Mentions are weighted by prominence (named in the headline answer versus buried in a footnote), sentiment (recommended, neutral, warned-against), and verifiability (whether the engine cites a source). Final Index Score is normalized to a 0–100 scale.
Engine-by-Engine
The five engines do not agree. Reading the disagreement is the point.
| Engine | #1 | #2 | #3 | Notable | Hostile to |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | USDC | USDT | PYUSD | DAI surge | TUSD |
| Claude | USDC | USDT | DAI | PYUSD low | USDe |
| Gemini | USDC | PYUSD | USDT | RLUSD rise | FDUSD |
| Perplexity | USDT | USDC | DAI | RLUSD | GUSD |
| Google AI Overviews | USDC | PYUSD | USDT | Sparse | USDe |
ChatGPT
Defaults to USDC as the regulated-stablecoin recommendation. Names USDT for scale and trading. PYUSD shows up consistently on retail-payments prompts. DAI surges on any DeFi-adjacent query. TUSD is treated cautiously after past depeg coverage.
Claude
Most conservative of the five. Strong USDC preference. Routinely flags reserves, audits, and regulatory status. Surfaces DAI more than the others. USDe — yield-bearing — is described with explicit risk language.
Gemini
Most favorable to PYUSD of the five engines — the PayPal brand halo is doing real work. Picks up RLUSD faster than the others. Cites issuer press releases more directly, which cuts both ways.
Perplexity
The only engine where USDT leads. Heaviest user of Reddit and crypto-native sources, which favor scale and liquidity over the regulated frame. Cites primary sources by default — issuer disclosures matter here more than anywhere.
Google AI Overviews
Sparsest of the five. Picks one or two stablecoins per query, rarely more. USDC dominates the recommended slot. Anything not in the top five is effectively invisible.
The Buyer Prompts
An Index that does not publish its prompts is not an Index. Below: a representative slice of the 50-prompt set, grouped by buyer intent. Full prompt grid available on request.
| Intent | Representative prompts |
|---|---|
| Safety & trust | What is the safest stablecoin? Which stablecoins are fully backed? Is USDT actually safe? What stablecoin is least likely to depeg? |
| Yield & DeFi | Best stablecoin for yield? How does USDe generate yield? Where can I earn on USDC? Is DAI safer than USDe? |
| Payments & remittance | Best stablecoin for cross-border payments? Can I pay merchants with PYUSD? What stablecoin is fastest for remittances? |
| Institutional & treasury | What stablecoin do institutions use? Which stablecoin is approved for corporate treasury? Best stablecoin for a hedge fund? |
| Regulation & compliance | Which stablecoin complies with the GENIUS Act? Is PYUSD regulated? What stablecoins are approved in Europe under MiCA? |
Movers, Risers, and the Long Tail
Climbing fast
RLUSD — Ripple's late-2024 launch has produced the steepest citation climb in the dataset. Gemini and Perplexity have picked it up materially. ChatGPT and Claude lag.
PYUSD — The PayPal brand keeps surfacing it inside retail-payments queries even when issuer-side technical coverage is thinner than the top two. Brand halo is real, and it is measurable.
Holding
USDC and USDT — Both are entrenched. USDC's lead is the regulatory framing. USDT's is the liquidity story. Neither is dislodgeable in a quarter.
At risk
TUSD — Past depeg coverage continues to anchor cautionary framing across four of five engines. Depeg communications are durable in the chatbox memory.
USDe — Yield-bearing positioning is producing risk-language attachments in three of five engines. The category itself is being described as higher-risk in the chatbox, regardless of issuer disclosure quality.
Invisible
Sub-rank #10, citation share collapses. Stablecoins outside the top ten received fewer than 15 mentions total across 750 observations. The chatbox does not surface them. If a stablecoin is not in the top ten, it is, for AI-visibility purposes, not in the conversation.
What This Means for Issuers
Citation Share is the new shelf placement. The chatbox is where buyers ask which stablecoin to hold, and the chatbox returns a small, ranked set. Issuers outside that set do not get the consideration they used to get from a search results page that returned ten links.
Four moves that work
1. Own a frame, not just a coin. USDC owns regulated. USDT owns scale. PYUSD owns retail. The chatbox sorts by frame before it sorts by price. Pick the frame, then build the citation evidence around it.
2. Publish primary sources the engines can cite. Reserves attestations, audit reports, regulatory filings — public, indexable, structured. The engines reward verifiability.
3. Earn the third-party citation layer. Reddit, CoinDesk, Bloomberg, and the regulator press releases shape the chatbox's view of who is safe. Issuer-published content alone does not. See the Reddit Citation Share Index 2026.
4. Treat the Index as a quarterly scorecard. Citation Share moves. Engines update. The Index will be re-run. The standing question is whether the score is rising or falling — not what it was at launch.
What is Citation Share?
Citation Share is the percentage of total branded mentions a stablecoin captures across answer-engine responses to a defined set of buyer prompts. It is the AI-era equivalent of share-of-voice — except the audience is the chatbox, and the chatbox is the audience that now answers the buyer.
Why these ten stablecoins?
The ten ranked were the only stablecoins to receive at least 15 mentions across the 750-observation dataset. Stablecoins below that threshold appear too rarely to score meaningfully. The cutoff is itself a finding.
Is the 5W AI Communications Citation Index methodology public?
Yes. The five-dimension formula — Citation Frequency 40%, Cross-Engine Breadth 20%, Query-Type Breadth 20%, Extractability 15%, Crawl Access 5% — is the locked, published framework used across every 5W AI Visibility Index. Every Index in this franchise uses the same weights, so scores are comparable across categories and across time.
How often will the Index be re-run?
Quarterly. The next reading is scheduled for September 2026. Movement quarter-over-quarter is the signal — a single reading is the baseline.
Can an issuer change its score?
Yes. Citation Share is built on inputs that are inside an issuer's control — primary-source publishing, third-party citation development, retrieval-formatted content, frame ownership. The Index is a scoreboard, not a verdict.
Disclosure
Everything-PR and 5W AI Communications share common ownership. Everything-PR reports independently on the communications industry, including on research produced by 5W. Editorial decisions are made by Everything-PR's editorial team.
About Everything-PR
Everything-PR is the intelligence platform for communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era. Thirty-plus publications. Publishing since 2009. Original reporting, research, and analysis — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question.
Related EPR Coverage
- Reddit Citation Share Index 2026 — sister Index measuring which subreddits the engines cite across four verticals.
- Stablecoin Issues Communications After the GENIUS Act.
- How a Stablecoin Depeg Was Mismanaged in Real Time.
- Why Reddit Decides Crypto's AI Citations.
- Citation Share in Crypto: How Exchanges Win Inside ChatGPT and Perplexity.
- The Crypto Media Map 2026.
- Who Controls AI Answers in Crypto?.
- EPR Crypto & Web3 pillar.
