The stablecoin market, a crucial part of the crypto market with 8.18% of the total cryptocurrency market, continues to surge by hitting a $165 billion market cap.
USDT (Tether) makes up 69.66% of the stablecoin market, which amounts to a $115 billion market cap, a massive dominance over the other stablecoins.
While USDT has always been dominant in the stablecoin market, over 70% of the stablecoin market has been generated from USDT alone in the past one year.
The second stablecoin behind USDT is USDC, which holds a market capitalization of $34.5 billion, followed by DAI, which has a market cap of $5.3 billion.
The recent milestone hit by USDT results from the increase in demand due to the recent volatility experienced in the crypto market. As reported by Lookonchain on the X platform, $1.3 billion USDT has been transferred from TetherTreasury to exchanges since the market crash on August 5.
These transfers were made to crypto exchanges, including OKX, Coinbase, Kraken, and Binance, among others.
Not only has there been high demand for USDT, but USDT has always been a popular option for trading and holding value in the crypto market.
However, the recent USDT growth is under scrutiny as a report has alleged that there has been misuse of this stablecoin for illegal activities and by sanctioned entities.
The company itself are making an effort to monitor these illegal and illicit activities, which involve stablecoin products on the secondary market. In July alone, they froze a TRON network address holding about 29.62 million USDT.
They plan to put more effort into monitoring illicit activities, as they have announced plans to double their workforce by mid-2025 to bolster compliance with regulatory laws, and they have also announced a partnership with blockchain data security platform Chainalysis to create tools for monitoring secondary market activities involving illicit funds.
The recent milestone reached by USDT is really no surprise to many, as the financial report released just a week ago shows they hit $5.2 billion in the first half of 2024, a new record since USDT Tether started operation. They achieved these earnings despite having a smaller workforce, which they plan to double by mid-2025.
