Odaily Frontline | Tether's market value has grown from $951,000 to $18.5 billion in four years

This article comes fromBitcoin.com, original author: Jamie Redman

Odaily Translator |

, original author: Jamie Redman

Odaily Translator |

Stablecoins have been hugely popular over the past two years since the 2017 bull run followed an initial bear market. Statistics show that the current market value of all mainstream stablecoins has reached about 23.9 billion US dollars. Among the more than 30 stablecoins in 2020, Tether (USDT) is still a behemoth, accounting for 76.15% of the overall market share. Since January 2016, Tether's market capitalization has grown from $951,000 to $18.5 billion, an increase of 1,900,000%.

Tether's market capitalization jumps from $1 million to over $18 billion in four years

Tether (USDT) is by far the most used dollar-pegged token, and the project has grown massively since its inception. At press time, USDT was issued on the Bitcoin blockchain using the Omni Layer protocol 2,236 days ago (October 6, 2014).

Today, Tether has been issued on multiple blockchains, and it is also the first stablecoin issued on Ethereum using the ERC20 standard. After Ethereum, Tether has been issued on Tron, BCH, EOS, Liquid, Algorand, as well as Solana (Layer 1) and Matic (Layer 2).

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Odaily Note: The latest official data shows that USDT circulation is 18,630,704,170.87; EURT circulation is 40,001,800.

Statistics show that Binance and Huobi Global are currently the two exchanges with the most USDT exchanges. On November 21, 2020, the concentration of large Tether holders was 29%, while USDT's price correlation with BTC was -0.37. Over the past seven days, USDT transaction records in the region above $100,000 show that $16.1 billion has been settled in the last week. 45% of USDT transactions come from the Western Hemisphere and 55% from the Eastern Hemisphere.

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Seven-day stats for the USDT/USD chart for Saturday, November 21, 2020.

undeniable growth

On January 3, 2016, Tether's market capitalization was only $951,600. The transaction volume of USDT in 24 hours is only 139,000 US dollars. In just four years, the USDT in circulation has reached 18.5 billion US dollars, an increase of more than 1900000%.

From $951,000 in 2016 to $9.95 million on January 1, 2017, Tether has achieved considerable growth, and its market value ranking has risen to 25th.

On Saturday, November 21, 2020, the market capitalization of stablecoins was about $24 billion, and the transaction volume also reached $49 billion.

In January 2018, after the bull market in 2017, Tether's market value ranking dropped to 37th among more than 5,000 encrypted assets. At that time two years ago, there were 43 cryptoassets with a market cap of more than $1 billion, including USDT with a market cap of $1.47 billion.

Another year passed, and on January 6, 2019, Tether (USDT) became the 8th top ten crypto asset in January. In the first month of 2019, USDT in circulation increased from 1.47 billion to 1.91 billion.

At the beginning of 2016, the market capitalization of Tether (USDT) ranked 30th. The 32nd-ranked nubits (USNBT) is also a stablecoin, but USNBT is trading as low as $0.14 today. Just recently, Origin Protocol’s stablecoin dropped to as low as $0.16 while trading at a consistent average USD price.

One year later, Tether's (USDT) market capitalization has grown from $1.9 billion to $4.1 billion on January 5, 2020, an increase of more than 115%. Since then, the USDT market capitalization has increased by 343% to $18.5 billion, a huge increase.

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Competitors and Controversies

Contenders for the stablecoin market include USDC ($2.7 billion), DAI ($1 billion), BUSD ($679 million) and PAX ($399 million). At the same time, each competitor has a different type of dollar-pegged scheme, whether it is traditional collateral or hypercollateralization, such as DAI. There are also some stablecoins anchored to other international currencies, such as the euro and the yen. While this is rare, some stablecoins end up not being pegged to the USD like nubits (USNBT) and the recent issue with Origin Protocol's OUSD stablecoin.

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BTC trading pairs data on cryptocompare.com shows that on Saturday, November 21, 2020, Tether (USDT) dominated BTC fiat trading volume."What makes Tether so controversial is its incredible growth rate and the fact that the company has been battling the office of U.S. Attorney General Letitia James for the state of New York. "Our investigation has determined that the operators of the 'Bitfinex' trading platform also controlled the 'tether' virtual currency, and that they collectively concealed the apparent loss of $850 million in mixed customer and company funds," James said at the time.

In addition, the Tether company told the public that USDT is backed by U.S. dollars in a 1:1 ratio. However, the company later admitted that USDT is backed by 74 percent of U.S. dollars, with the remainder backed by other forms of collateral.

Tether Operations Limited also responded to the Attorney General's allegations and categorically denied what the companies considered "false assertions": "Bitfinex and Tether have been cooperating fully with the New York Attorney General's Office, and both companies have cooperated with all regulatory agencies,