USDC Surpasses Tether On The Ethereum Network

January 19, 2022 3:47 pm Comments

The total supply of USD Coin (USDC) on the Ethereum is now more than the total supply of Tether (USDT) which indicates a potential shift in the changing popularity of stable coins that are being used.

As of right now, USDC has a total has a total supply of $40.5 billion while USDT leads roughly in second place at around $39.8 billion.

Since the very early stages of the cryptocurrency industry, Tether so far has been the undisputed leader as far as stable coins go as it holds the majority of the market share for stable coins and has a total market cap of around $80 billion.

Recently though, Tether has been expanding to other blockchains due to the increasing fees for transactions on the Ethereum blockchain.

Yahoo reports:

With escalating Ethereum network fees, which are currently around $33 for an average transaction, Tether has been shifting its supply to other networks.

Almost half of it, or 38.7 billion USDT, is on the Tron network.

The remainder is spread over a few other blockchains including Omni, Solana, EOS, Liquid, Algorand, and SLP (Bitcoin Cash).

The third-largest stablecoin by market capitalization is Binance USD (BUSD) which has a circulation of 14.2 billion tokens according to FXempire.

TerraUSD (UST) has taken the fourth spot from the decentralized DAI stablecoin with 10.7 billion tokens. DAI has a little less at 9.3 billion.

Tether is not without any downsides however despite being the most liquid stable coin on many cryptocurrency exchanges.

In the past, Tether has faced criticism from the cryptocurrency industry because of a number of law suits that it was involved in where it faced regulatory scrutiny.

The lawsuits involved whether Tether actually had the funds to back up each coin because the company had issues being compliant to do full audit checks.

Despite the history, Tether continues to be very much in demand as the need for it comes mainly from cryptocurrency users and institutions as the main stable coin to rely on.

The USDC coin, on the other hand, is starting to carve out its own specific niche in terms of usage.

The USDC is starting to be seen as a potentially more safer alternative as its parent company, Circle, is regulated crypto-financial firm.

So far, USDC has not faced any regulatory scrutiny and provides proof that each coin is pegged to the US dollar in order to gain trust among users.

More light can be shed into the difference between the stable coins.

Cryptoslate.com reports:

Further comparing the two rival stablecoins, USDC is mainly used and demanded in DeFi protocols, whereas USDT is in higher demand on centralized exchanges.

Historical uncertainties on how exactly USDT are backed by dollars and other assets have for most parts cleared over the years, with a significant share of the backing in less secure and/or liquid corporate debt, while USDC has been quite clear on how they back the USDC token with cash and treasury bonds.

Stablecoins are for the most part used for two reasons, one being a significantly more efficient method for transferring money across the globe, the other one being a way to off-load crypto assets into a stable fiat value, without having to leave the realm of crypto.

Because stablecoin issuers keep, or claim to keep, the underlying fiat currency as a backing, and always redeem the stablecoin tokens for fiat currency at a fixed price, stablecoins are said to be pegged 1:1 to the underlying fiat currency.

The stable coin industry continues to see explosive growth in general as cryptocurrencies continue to be utilized by more mainstream institutions all around the world.

As the industry continues to grow, there is the potential that new leaders for the stable coin industry may emerge in the future.

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