The growth of Tether as the third cryptocurrency in the world

The growth of Tether (USDT) does not stop, to the point that after the recent declines it has become the third cryptocurrency in the world by market capitalization. 

In reality, it is a stablecoin and not a cryptocurrency strictly speaking, yet its market capitalization of over $9 billion has allowed it to surpass XRP firmly. 

Following the recent decline, XRP’s market cap has fallen well below $9 billion, while USDT’s market cap is continuing to grow, to the point where it may even exceed $10 billion. 

For now, the first two cryptocurrencies for market capitalization, Bitcoin and Ether, are quite distant. Nonetheless, while BTC with over $174 billion seems unapproachable, ETH is not that far away.

The capitalization of Ether is $26 billion, while that of Tether has doubled in just over two months. To be fair, even the capitalization of ETH has almost doubled since the mid-March lows, although it is still lower than the 2020 highs, for example. 

The thing is that USDT is playing an increasingly important role as a source of liquidity in DeFi, which generates strong demand for this stablecoin. 

In addition, it has reached a market share of 77.84% among Ethereum-based stablecoins, thanks to the USDT ERC20 tokens, whose demand has grown by about 113% since the beginning of the year, from $2.3 billion to $4.9 billion. 

USDT is also present on other blockchains, such as Algorand, Ethereum, EOS, Liquid Network, Omni and TRON. 

USDT trading volumes on exchanges are also very high. It is enough to think that the absolute most traded pair across all exchanges in the world is BTC/USDT, which also outperforms BTC/USD, though not on all exchanges. 

Moreover, the daily USDT trading volumes on all crypto exchanges as a whole are higher than those of BTC, since the ETH/USDT pair also dominates among the Ether pairs, well above both ETH/USD and ETH/BTC, as well as those of other cryptocurrencies.  

The CTO of Tether, Paolo Ardoino, said: 

“Tether is manifestly growing in popularity as the most liquid, stable and trusted stablecoin. Tether’s ascent to become the third biggest cryptocurrency underlines the pivotal role USDt plays in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. The march of USDt is gathering momentum amid growing recognition that stablecoins will play an important role in the future of finance as a trusted and robust form of digital money. Tether functions as the reserve currency for the crypto market. The recent market instability has demonstrated that there is a huge need for this asset. Investors want a safe haven to reduce the risk in their portfolios”.