Tether's USDT stablecoin has seen a significant increase in market share among stablecoins as the $136 billion stablecoin market continues to see changes. According to CoinGecko data, USDT's market share among stablecoins topped 54% on Monday, the highest since November 2021. Tether's market share gain has come primarily at the expense of rival stablecoin Binance USD, which has experienced a sharp decline since its launch. The issuer, Paxos, announced in February that it would stop issuing 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 $44 billion market cap is still lower than it was 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 the world's dominant stablecoin issuer is remarkable, given its historically opaque information about its reserves that back the value of USDT and the intense scrutiny of its internal transactions. Despite this, USDT is the most traded cryptocurrency, with a trading volume of $27 billion in the last 24 hours, according to CoinGecko, bigger than bitcoin. Tether is also facing legal challenges, with a New York judge ordering Tether to produce financial records on USDT reserve assets in a lawsuit alleging that Tether conspired to issue USDT to prop up the bitcoin price.
The major cryptocurrencies are trading as follows as of 9am IST on March 7, 2023:
Bitcoin: $22,777.04 USD
+0.32%
Ethereum: $1,602.52 USD
+0.58%
Tether: $1.02
-0.35%
USD Currency: $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%
Polka Dots: $6.05 USD
+0.16%
Tron: $0.0673 USD
-0.38%
Litecoin: $89.01 USD
-1.65%
Shibu-Inu: $0.00001146 USD
+1.73%
