3 years ago
134 The Tether (USDT) market cap surpassed $50 billion on April 26, 2021. That is a sign that the crypto bull market is still heating up. Tether Operations Limited confirmed that the 50 billionth USDT token has been minted.
Tether confirmed this milestone on Friday, with about 50 billion USDT now reported to be in circulation. Its supply, and hence the market capitalization, has grown by a factor of 10 within the last12 months. This includes 25% growth within a month.
Being a dollar-backed stablecoin, one USDT is equivalent to $1 in assets that are held by Tether. The CTO at Tether, Paolo Ardoino, said:
“Crossing a market cap of US$50 billion represents an incredibly important milestone for Tether. Tether’s success is a blueprint for a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and a banking system of the future. We are truly humbled by the pivotal role that Tether now plays in the digital token ecosystem across myriad protocols and applications.”
USDT currently enjoys a distinct position in the crypto community. Being the first stablecoin to appear in the market, Tether is now the most liquid and majorly used dollar peg on the market. On many exchanges, USDT remains to be one of the top quote currencies for Ether (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC) trading pairs.
At the time of publication, USDT accounted for nearly 66.1% of the entire stablecoin market. The next biggest stablecoin, USD Coin (USDC), is currently worth less than $11 billion.
Recently, the stablecoin issuer has been the center of speculation about its main reserves, with some of the crypto observers saying that Tether’s disinformation has become a major source of uncertainty, fear, and doubt in the crypto community. Tether seems to have laid those worries to rest after an assurance report published by Cayman Islands-based Moore Cayman confirmed that Tether tokens are entirely backed by reserves.
This assurance report, which is not the same as an audit, came about a month after Tether settled an $18.5 million fine with the Office of the New York Attorney General. Tether also agreed to produce periodic filings as part of the settlement to prove its current reserve status.
