The Race Of The Stablecoins

Published 5 years ago on October 29, 2018

Stablecoins, though rare, are now starting to appear more regularly across the market. The most-traded stablecoins at present, include Tether, TrueUSD and USD Coin, all of whom are currently relishing in high market capitalisation. In first place is Tether with a market cap of over 1,915,000,000, in second is TrueUSD with a market cap of $179,045,088 and in third place is USD Coin $126,491,038.These are the top three stablecoins on the market at the current time of writing and yet it’s clear which stablecoin is a clear leader. Tether aims to keep it’s called USDT on the same level at the US dollar by backing each token with $1 in bank deposits, accounts for the most part of the stablecoin market by total value, exchange and other factors. The market has started to show signs of worry surrounding Tether, focusing on the firms access to banking services and its claims to have fully collateralized outstanding Tether supply.The token hasn’t traded at $1 with any consistency since earlier this month. On 15th October, the token hit a low of $0.85 on one market even while the exchange rate mostly recovered it still lags below target trading at $0.99 on Sunday according to CoinMarketCap. Meanwhile, the multiple stablecoins that rival Tether have taken their place on the market which includes Paxos Standard, Circles USD Coin, Maker’s Dai, TrueUSD, Gemini Dollar and so on.You might have expected Tether to lose some of its rope as the competitors flooded into the market. However, while TUSD and USDC have made the biggest impact, data shows that there isn’t a winner of this race just yet but Tether is firmly on top.As said by CoinDesk:

“All these coins are vying for a critical role in the crypto ecosystem. Stablecoins, in theory, allow traders to move money between exchanges quickly – without having to rely on access to traditional banking. They also allow traders to move their funds into a less risky asset during times of heightened volatility, without having to withdraw funds from an exchange.”

There are several ways to measure market share for stablecoins but none of them are perfect indicators. One is by checking out the market capitalisation for when the asset is supposed to trade 1-for-1 with traditional currency, should be the same as the overall supply. The creator of the blockchain data site, Coinmetrics spoke on the matter and said: "Tether has definitely lost market share in terms of the supply of USD allocated to different stablecoins." What are your thoughts? Let us know what you think down in the comments below!

Investment Disclaimer

Robert Johnson

Robert first came across Bitcoin in 2016 during a meetup in Belgium, and has been hooked ever since. With a background in Economics, you can find Robert frequently looking at the Twitter feed of the SEC for any regulatory updates relating to Bitcoin and Crypto in general.