Tether (USDT) maintains its leadership with a 10% increase in market cap over the past month. In contrast, other stablecoins such as USD Coin (USDC), Binance USD (BUSD), and DAI record a continuous decline.
Tether (USDT) is the only stablecoin to record an increase in market cap
Looking at the market cap chart of the major stablecoins, Tether (USDT) is the only one to record a 10% increase in the past month. In contrast, USD Coin (USDC), Binance USD (BUSD) and DAI are down.
And indeed, the stablecoin leader USDT went from a total capitalization of $73.68 billion to $74.58 billion this morning alone.
In contrast, in the past 24 hours, Circle’s stablecoin, USDC, from $38.9 billion market cap has dropped to $37.5 billion.
BUSD, issued by US-based Paxos Trust Company, also had a drop from $8.38 billion to $8.33. And finally, MakerDAO’s stablecoin DAI also fell from $6.21 billion to a market cap of $6 billion.
This drop in market capitalization led BUSD, USDC, and DAI to lose their peg to the dollar.
Tether maintains its leadership in the stablecoin market, not only because of the increases in total market capitalization, but also because the amount achieved is almost double that of USDC, the second largest stablecoin by market cap.
In any case, in the overall crypto ranking, USDT is in third place. Followed by USDC in fifth place, and BUSD and DAI which are in tenth and fifteenth place, respectively.
Tether also gains ground due to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank
Among the various reasons for Tether’s market cap surge is the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which allegedly prompted investors to shift their funds from USDC to USDT.
As a matter of fact, USDC’s loss of peg to the dollar came soon after news leaked out that $3.3 billion of Circle’s $40 billion in stablecoin reserves were deposited in Silicon Valley Bank, which collapsed on 10 March 2023.
According to Wall Street Journal reports, Kevin March, co-founder of the trading firm Floating Point Group, one of the companies to have swapped USDC for USDT, reportedly said the following:
“Many of our customers chose to do the same, putting a lot of sell pressure on the USDC-USDT trading pair.”
Steven Kelly, researcher at Yale University’s Financial Stability Program, also said:
“We knew Circle had exposure to SVB, we found out what it was and there was a run. We don’t really know as much about tether, and it just seems safer for that reason alone.”
The anniversary of Plan ₿
Earlier this month, the City of Lugano and Tether Operation Limited celebrated the one-year anniversary of the Plan ₿ initiative.
Indeed, it was precisely on 3 March 2022 that the partnership was announced, with the aim of creating a comprehensive ecosystem for the use of digital assets in the city.
Plan ₿ was launched to accelerate the use of Bitcoin technology and give a boost to transform the city’s financial infrastructure. In this way, Lugano is increasingly becoming a major center for promoting blockchain in Europe.
Not only that, participating in the initiative are a consortium of companies that have announced a 100 million Swiss franc fund to support crypto startups and a 3 million Swiss franc fund to assist Lugano stores and businesses in adopting crypto.
Bitcoin, Tether and Lugano’s LVGA tokens have been made legal for payment of taxes, parking tickets, utilities and university fees.