Tether (USDT) has long been the crypto market’s largest stablecoin. Now, however, there seem to be small cracks in this dominance. Indeed, yesterday the trading volume on the Ethereum (ETH) network of its major rival USD Coin (USDC) was higher than that of USDT!
Ethereum Volume USDC Rises
Messari, an on-chain data platform, shows that it “Real Volume” from USDC yesterday on the Ethereum network came in at $1.1 billion. For USDT from Tether, this counter remained at 579 million dollars.
The Real Volume is an indicator of Messari in which it tries to exclude fake trading volume. It then looks at a selection of crypto exchanges that it judges to have legitimate trading volume. These are exchanges like Binance and Coinbase Pro.
An important caveat here is that it concerns only trading volume on the Ethereum network. Stablecoins can be launched on different blockchains. In the overall picture, tether still takes the cake by far. According to Coingecko, the total trading volume of tether in the past 24 hours was $42.4 billion. USDC remains with the total trading volume at 4.4 billion dollars.
USDC market capitalization rises, USDT sees fall
Nevertheless, the crypto news that USDC’s trading volume on Ethereum exceeded USDT’s may be a first sign that Tether’s dominance may end. The stablecoin is currently the third largest crypto on the market, behind bitcoin (BTC) and ether.
Right behind that, we see USD Coin popping up. While Tether has seen its market cap drop to its current point of $67.2 billion in recent weeks, USD Coin’s has slowly risen to its current point of $56.1 billion. In short, the two stablecoins are getting closer and closer.
The development appears to stem from the recent events surrounding Terra’s UST stablecoin. It completely collapsed, denting overall confidence in stablecoins. USD Coin is known for being relatively transparent and its reserves are 100% cash and bonds. Tether’s reserves, on the other hand, are relatively unknown. Recently, the company denied that there is a bloodthirsty situation regarding the reserves that are supposed to back USDT.