The cryptographic stablecoin issuer Tether has just minted 1 billion USDT on the Ethereum blockchain a few hours ago, bringing the asset’s market capitalization to a new all-time high of $93 billion.
The expansion of the currency continues without too many hitches, which is increasingly used for exchanges in centralized markets and for offshore transactions.
At this rate, USDT will definitely reach the record value of 100 billion dollars in 2024.
Let’s see all the details below.
Tether expands its reach on the Ethereum blockchain by minting 1 billion USDT stablecoins
Tether, a technology company based in Hong Kong and the British Virgin Islands, completed its latest USDT stablecoin mint at 01:15 today, January 5, 2023.
By leveraging the decentralized network Ethereum, in the last 3 days, 1.15 billion USDT tokens have been added to the existing 42 billion in the form of ERC-20 tokens.
After this operation, including the 48.8 billion minted on Tron, and the 7.8 billion belonging to 7 different networks, the asset’s market capitalization has reached a new all-time high of 93 billion dollars.
This move reflects the company’s commitment to increasingly dominate the landscape of digital currencies anchored to the value of the US dollar, expanding its presence in dominant decentralized networks.
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) January 4, 2024
Just 3 days ago, on January 2nd, the market capitalization of Tether amounted to $91.74 billion: in 3 separate minting operations carried out in a few hours, it made a significant jump upwards, reaching an all-time high (ATH) that other Tether competitors envy.
In fact, while USDT continues to grow along with other currencies managed by the company such as EURT and XAUT, other providers like Circle and MakerDao struggle to inject liquidity into their respective products.
USDC for example has lost over 18 billion in market capitalization in the last year, showing a small recovery in the month of December while DAI has lost about 400 million dollars in the same period.
It is worth noting how the rise of Tether and USDT is driving the recovery of the broader stablecoin market with increasing numbers in the last 14 weeks after a long period of distribution.
From May 2022 to September 2023, we have indeed witnessed a contraction phase of the circulating stablecoin number, justified by the advent of the bearish market on most cryptocurrencies.
From October onwards, however, it seems that things have changed: the increase in market volumes and the frenzy brought by the narrative of the Bitcoin spot ETF is fueling the need for more available stablecoins on various trading platforms.
Tether is meeting this need by occasionally printing a few billion dollars in USDT.
Most likely this trend will continue throughout 2024, especially if the SEC approves the first exchange-traded fund for Bitcoin in the United States.
The uncontrollable growth of Tether in recent years
In February 2016, when Bitcoin was worth just 350 dollars, Tether, the stablecoin issuer, reached a market capitalization of 1 million dollars for its new USDT currency, which had been launched a few months earlier.
From then on, we witnessed years of unprecedented growth for the cryptocurrency and its parent company, with an explosion of use cases and demand both on the institutional and retail front.
With the arrival of the bull run of cryptocurrencies in 2017, in a short time the exchange trades increased enormously, leading to the need to rely on a stable and transferable cryptographic currency on-chain, whose value was based on that of the US dollar.
In January 2018, the market capitalization of USDT reached 1 billion dollars, and it was starting to become more and more known in the crypto world.
In October of the same year, the stablecoin faced its first difficult period, losing over 35% of its market value in just one month. However, it managed to recover all the lost ground by May 2019.
With 2020 there was a real boom for this currency which reached 19 billion dollars in December, starting the year at just 4 billion.
2021, on the other hand, was the year of the consecration of USDT and the corporate solidity of Tether, which was now worth over 70 billion dollars.
In 2022, after a brilliant first quarter, we witnessed the unexpected collapse of the stablecoin UST of the Terra/Luna project which triggered a crisis of trust throughout the cryptographic sector.
In May and June, Tether left behind a whopping $15.5 billion in USDT that was withdrawn by its customers, scared about the fate of the crypto market.
Then, with the recovery that has occurred in the last 2 quarters of 2022 and throughout 2023, we have arrived at the present day, where Tether represents a cornerstone of the industry, driving all the increases in the main digital assets.
If in 2024 the spot ETF for Bitcoin is finally approved and the attention of traditional market investors shifts to crypto sector assets, it is likely that the demand for USDT will grow even more, possibly reaching the historical milestone of 100 billion dollars in market capitalization.
Meanwhile, Paolo Ardoino, CTO of Teher, reminds the public that while USDT continues to grow and expand, the issuing company itself is also strengthening financially.
According to him, Q4 2023 was impressive.
Who knows if part of the company’s profits will be reinvested in Bitcoin or in mining the same cryptocurrency, as has already happened in the past.
Tether’s Q4/2023 was impressive.
— Paolo Ardoino
(@paoloardoino) January 2, 2024