Tether’s $USDT has become the world’s dominant %Stablecoin amid a shakeup of the $136 billion U.S. market.
USDT’s market share among stablecoins surpassed 54% this week, according to data from %CoinGecko.
That means that USDT is now the dominant stablecoin by market share, the first time that has happened since November 2021 when the crypto bull market was at its peak.
Stablecoins are %Cryptocurrencies that are pegged to the value of another asset, typically the U.S. dollar of price of gold bullion.
Tether’s gains in the stablecoin market come as rival digital assets such as Binance USD falter.
The rise of USDT also comes as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other regulators crackdown on stablecoins.
The SEC has said that stablecoins are not regulated securities and taken action to halt the minting and trading of several of the digital tokens.
Crypto exchange Binance’s stablecoin suffered a heavy selloff after issuer Paxos announced in February that it would no longer mint new USD tokens due to pressure from the New York Department of Financial Services, the state’s top regulator.
Since then, USD’s market cap has shrunk to $9 billion U.S. from $16 billion U.S. previously.
In contrast, USDT’s market capitalization has swelled by $5.3 billion U.S. this year to reach $71.6 billion U.S.
Stablecoins have become essential to the crypto sector in recent years as they are seen as more stable and trustworthy investments.
Stablecoins also facilitate trading on crypto exchanges and make transactions between central bank-issued fiat money and the digital asset world possible.
USDT is currently the most traded cryptocurrency with some $27 billion U.S. of trading volume per day, surpassing even Bitcoin’s (BTC) trading volume, according to CoinGecko.