USDT remains the biggest stablecoin in the market with a market capitalization of $66.38 billion.
Leading stablecoin Tether (USDT) has reportedly flipped top payment processors Visa and Mastercard in terms of settlement volume. This was disclosed in a recent tweet by Tether, suggesting that USDT processed about $18.2 trillion in transactions in 2022.
Per the tweet, Mastercard processed fewer transactions that were worth $14.1 trillion in the outgone year. However, VISA had a settlement volume of $7.7 trillion, coming in at a distant third.
Tether USDT Leading the Rise of Stablecoins
Without a doubt, there is a growing adoption of stablecoins and the settlement volume report is a testament to this fact. Even more impressive is the fact that 2022 was no doubt a difficult year for the crypto industry in general. But yet, somehow stablecoin adoption continually grew as traders sought to navigate the worsening global economic conditions that have devalued most national fiat currencies.
Meanwhile, it might be worth mentioning that despite the general growth of stablecoins, Tether’s condition was somewhat stagnant at some point last year. But that was largely a result of growing concerns over its reserves and solvency. The concerns arose following Terra’s shocking crash in May, and more recently, the FTX collapse in November. This means that rivals like USDC and BUSD outperformed USDT in 2022. Nonetheless, USDT remains the biggest stablecoin in the market with a market capitalization of $66.38 billion, per CoinMarketCap data.
Is USDC Threatening?
Meanwhile, the USDC might be closing in on USDT’s dominance of the stablecoin space. With a market cap of $56 billion itself, USDC is seeing overwhelming support from investors and exchanges alike as Tether continues to be under fire over its lack of transparency when it comes to its reserves.
Putting the above statement into perspective, centralized crypto exchanges like Coinbase recently urged its users to convert their USDT holdings into USDC. That is not to mention how Crypto.com also recently delisted USDT for its Canadian users.
With all the uncertainties surrounding Tether, it is not exactly surprising why some crypto enthusiasts may not buy the recent report on Tether’s trading volume in 2022. Some are still insisting that the stablecoin issuer makes its reserves public, while others attribute the metrics to wash trading.
next