Tether prints 100 billionth USDT

Monday registered an all-time market cap high for bitcoin, thanks to its near record high price, plus 27 months of fresh supply issuance since last cycle’s peak.

But Bitcoin wasn’t the only crypto setting records.

Tether’s USDT stablecoin finally cracked its ninth zero, and is now sitting at a circulating supply of 100,044,694,548 tethers. That’s more than 3.4x the market cap of the number two stablecoin, Circle’s USDC.

On 24-hour volume basis, tether is nearly five times bigger than its nearest rival FDUSD, which almost exclusively greases trading liquidity on the Binance exchange, per CoinGecko’s stablecoin rankings.

USDT still plays a large role on Binance, but its reach is vast, providing USD trading pairs on the overwhelming majority of the 200 or so centralized exchange worldwide.

In DeFi, USDC plays a much larger part, featured in the top pairs on all the top DEXes.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino, the operation’s frontman, marked the occasion, calling it “a testament to Tether’s pivotal role in reshaping the landscape of digital finance.”

“Surpassing the $100 billion market cap is not just a numerical achievement,” he said in a statement to Blockworks. “Our success is not measured solely by market capitalization but by the trust and confidence instilled in us by our customers.”

The stablecoin continues to beguile its staunchest critics who, mystified by its failure to collapse despite numerous trials both literal and figurative, over the years.

The ultimate test of an on-chain dollar is how well it hews to its peg, and on that score USDT is solidly in the green. Tether is objectively the most stable.

And while it is likely to remain controversial, the market endorsement coupled with improved transparency has helped USDT grow into only the fifth ever crypto to reach the $100 billion mark, joining bitcoin, ether, BNB and XRP, although the latter two have slipped back below for quite some time.

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