According to Tether’s transparency page, the total market capitalization of USDT has reached $51 billion, an important milestone for the most popular stablecoin in the crypto market. It has been the most valuable stablecoin by marketcap for quite sometime.
The stablecoin’s market cap has been growing at a rate of $10 billion over the past months, which could suggest a market cap of $100 billion by the end of the year if the trend continues.
Tether’s Chief Technology Officer, Paolo Ardoino, referred to the event by referring that it was an, “incredibly important milestone as Tether’s success is a blueprint for a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and a banking system of the future.”
The continued growth of the stablecoin comes at a time when the whole cryptocurrency ecosystem has shown continued growth among a new influx of institutional and private investors.
These investors are looking to take advantage of the growing legitimacy of the industry, which has been boosted by notable milestones such as the listing of Coinbase in NASDAQ.
Tether has announced it will be launching “Tether week”, an event that will celebrate the milestone by discussing the coin’s history and plans for the future
Tron’s USDT Circulation Surpasses Ethereum’s
Another important milestone has been reached by Tether in recent days as the Tron supply has finally surpassed Ethereum, which was the network that originally had the sole supply of the stablecoin.
With the congestion and high gas prices experienced by Ethereum ever since the DeFi boom of 2020, Tron became an increasingly popular alternative for users of USDT who sought a cheaper and faster alternative, as Tron offered considerably lower fees for transactions on its network when compared to Ethereum.
At the time of writing, a total of $25,9 billion USDT are circulating in the Tron Network while $24.4 are circulating on Ethereum. Other networks with a circulation of USDT include Algorand, Omni, EOS, Liquid, SLP, and Solana.
Ardoino also referred to this event by Tweeting: “Recent high-transaction fees on #Ethereum pushed more #tether to flow onto #Tron. In the end, no one wants to pay 20$ to send 100$. EVM compatible blockchains make swaps almost seamless.”
USDT has become increasingly popular among users looking to use cryptocurrency to pay for goods and services in a way similar to fiat, as well as heaven against the volatility of the crypto market, which has made the cost of fees a priority for most of them.
Tether Supporters Remain Unfazed Amid Criticism to the Stablecoin
Ever since its launch in 2014, Tether has been the target of criticism among skeptics who don’t believe the company’s claim about a 1:1 reserver with the US dollar. This criticism only grew bigger when the company was sued and reached an $18.5 agreement with the New York attorney general’s office in back February.
While Tether and Bitfinex, which was also involved, decided to settle, none of them accepted any wrongdoing but agreed to report on the assets backing the stablecoin by May 19 of 2021. This legal battle also resulted in neither Tether nor Bitfinex being able to operate in New York.
As a response to the event, Tether released an audit by Moore Cayman in March, which showed that the company had sufficient assets to back the stablecoin’s market capitalization on February 28th. This did nothing to stop trade in the stablecoin.
The audit was not enough to stop criticism against Tether but it allowed the stablecoin to gain more investors to continue its incredible growth and reach the milestone that it now celebrates. However, all eyes are set on the disclosure of the reports that the company must present the New York government by May 19th.
The post Tether’s Market Cap Passes $50 Billion as Tron Circulation Takes the Lead appeared first on Blockonomi.
