New updates to the Stablecoin market and the rest of the cryptocurrency ecosystem are released daily. Things changed quickly, particularly after TerraUSD [UST] entered the scene only to crash and burn. While some people have struggled to move on from the de-pegging event, others may have found a firm footing.
Tether (USDT) has dominated the stablecoin market for several years. Tether’s closest competitor, Circle’s USD Coin (USDC), is the one making news today.
USDC market cap increasing
USDC passed the 50 billion mark in circulation about five months ago. Despite this accomplishment, USDT maintained a significant lead over its competitor in terms of market capitalization and the number of daily transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. This chasm may have now widened significantly.
Circle’s USD Coin (USDC) has surpassed Tether’s USDT in daily Ethereum blockchain transactions. Alex Svanevik, CEO of on-chain data hub Nansen, also tweeted about the achievement.
it happened – USDC flipped USDT on # txs https://t.co/yLGafFyJJS pic.twitter.com/byTk6YOWRe
— Alex Svanevik🐧 (@ASvanevik) June 20, 2022
Circle’s dollar-pegged stablecoin has yet to overtake USDT in market capitalization. The current market capitalizations of the two cryptocurrencies are $67.8 billion and $55.5 billion, respectively. Given the headwinds, Tether may lose its footing or even the battle. Amid the chaos, however, USDC drew interest from market participants.
The de-pegging of Terra’s USD and eventual collapse sent shockwaves through the crypto market. Major stablecoins like Tether [USDT] and USD Coin [USDC], as well as DAI, underwent significant changes. In fact, at press time, the USDT was hovering around the $0.99 mark, indicating that it has yet to reach the $1-peg.
To make matters worse, Paolo Ardoino, Tether’s Chief Technical Officer, confirmed the occurrence of a DDoS attack. Tether received 8 million requests per five minutes, compared to the usual 2 thousand requests per five minutes.
“This morning @Tether_to received a ransom request to avoid mass DDOSes. They tried already once. On a normal day we have around 2k reqs/5min The attack brought us to 8M reqs/5min.”
On the other hand, as of press time, USDC was still pegged at $1 on CoinMarketCap. Regarding transferring volume, USDC is the most popular stablecoin, accounting for 51.5 percent of the total.
Tether and DAI have only 25% and 11.4 percent of the market, respectively.
Despite the market’s chaos, this is an unprecedented increase for USDC.
Is it over for USDT?
No, not at all. Tether (USDT) isn’t going away anytime soon. The stablecoin market is still dominated by USDT. Regulatory scars, on the other hand, are cause for concern.
Because of its “backing,” Tether has received a lot of negative press. Several lawsuits have been filed against it in the last few years. As a result, the firm’s efforts to provide transparency have fallen short of defusing the negative publicity it has received.
Circle, the regulated crypto-focused financial services firm behind the dollar-pegged stablecoin, hasn’t had to deal with any of these issues. Only time will tell how successful this competition is.
