Tether's USDT Stablecoin Dominance Reaches 15-month high in cryptocurrency market

Tether's USDT stablecoin has seen a significant rise in market share among stablecoins, as the $136 billion stablecoin market continues to experience changes. According to CoinGecko data, USDT's market share among stablecoins surpassed 54% on Monday, the highest it has been since November 2021. Tether's gain in market share has come mostly at the expense of rival stablecoin Binance USD, which has experienced a sharp decline since its issuer, Paxos, announced in February that it would halt minting new BUSD tokens due to pressure from the New York Department of Financial Services.

This year, USDT's market capitalization has grown by $5.3 billion to $71.6 billion, with $3 billion of the gains occurring after mid-February. Meanwhile, Circle's rival stablecoin, USD Coin, has also seen a $3 billion gain since the Paxos announcement, but its market capitalization of $44 billion is still lower than at the start of the year. Stablecoins have become the backbone of the crypto economy in recent years, with a peak market capitalization of $188 billion in May 2022.

Tether's position as issuer of the world's dominant stablecoin is remarkable, given its historically opaque reporting about its reserves backing the value of USDT and heavy scrutiny of its internal dealings. Despite this, USDT is the most traded cryptocurrency, with $27 billion of trading volume in the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko, larger than bitcoin. Tether is also facing legal challenges, with a New York judge ordering Tether to present financial records on USDT's reserve assets in a lawsuit alleging that Tether conspired to issue USDT to prop up the price of bitcoin.

Major cryptocurrencies are trading as follows as of 9 am IST, 7th March 2023:

Bitcoin: $22,777.04 USD

+0.32%

Ethereum: $1,602.52 USD
+0.58%

Tether: $1.02
-0.35%

USD Coin: $1.00 USD
-0.01%

BNB: $291.54 USD
+0.17%

XRP: $0.3735 USD
+0.67%

Dogecoin: $0.07681 USD
+1.74%

Cardano: $0.3374 USD
-1.09%

Polygon: $1.16 USD
+1.53%

Polkadot: $6.05 USD
+0.16%