Tether’s USDT stablecoin has reached a historic $100B market cap
Crypto stablecoin Tether (USDT) has surpassed the $100 billion market cap, posting a 9% year-over-year growth and widening the gap between its next biggest rival, USD Coin (USDC).
According to data from CoinGecko, USDT temporarily hit the $100 billion milestone on March 4 as market capitalization fluctuates based on current price and implied supply.
It is more than $71 billion more than its closest stablecoin competitor, the USDC, which is issued by Circle.
Chart showing USDT market price growth over the past seven days. Source: CoinGecko
On the other hand, Tether has yet to breach the $100 billion milestone according to other data sources such as CoinMarketCap.
Tether's marketplace puts it on a par with British oil and gas titan BP and slightly larger than e-commerce giant Shopify.
Tether is a US dollar-pegged cryptocurrency based on 14 blockchains and protocols, according to its website.
It is the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization behind Ether (ETH), and has grown to play a key role as a blockchain-based alternative for crypto traders in need of a stable asset.
Last month, the crypto market grew to a market cap of more than $2 trillion, with Bitcoin (BTC) posting a 50% price increase and a two-year high.
The company that issues the token – also called Tether – says it backs short-term lending to the US by offering 1:1 self-audited reserves for each USDT token, primarily yielding US Treasury bills (T-bills). The government.
In the year In the fourth quarter of 2023, the company posted a quarterly profit of $2.85 billion, $1 billion of which came from T-bills. In its fourth-quarter report, T-Bills announced that it had more than $80 billion in holdings, and previously said it was one of its biggest buyers of U.S. government debt.
The quality of the assets backing USDT has been a cause for concern in the crypto space, and Tether has sought to reduce its exposure to some of the higher-risk assets.
RELATED: Stablecoins Could Boost Dollar As Global Reserve: Fed Governor
In the year At the end of 2022, Tether promised that by the end of 2023, it would stop lending money from its reserves.
Those plans never materialized when he had $4.8 billion in loans on the books by the end of 2023, though that was $1 billion less than at the start of the year. It has promised to reduce the loans to zero by 2024, saying that the loans are fully guaranteed.
More than half of USDT is currently held on the Tron blockchain, which a January United Nations report said has “become the preferred option” for cyber fraud and money laundering based in Southeast Asia.
Tether responded to the report by saying that the United Nations failed to mention the company's law enforcement cooperation and token footprint.
Journal: Unstable Coins: Debasement, Bankruptcy and Other Risks Looming.
