Tether Operations Limited (Tether), the blockchain-enabled platform that powers the largest stablecoin by market capitalization, has surpassed US$60 billion in market capitalization as market participants flooded to the pre-eminent stablecoin in the face of recent market turbulence.

As the pioneer of the stablecoin model, Tether tokens (USDt) represent battle-tested technology that has been through many market cycles. The trust that market participants place in USDt has once again been underlined as the pre-eminent stablecoin has performed extremely well in the recent incidence of extreme market volatility, underlying its place as the most liquid, stable and trusted stablecoin.

The tetherization of trading continues to gather pace with spot exchanges denominating trading pairs in USDt. USDt is increasingly used in payments and remittances and plays a pivotal role as a liquidity provider in the nascent field of decentralized finance (DeFi).

The mushrooming market capitalization of USDt has seen it garner year-on-year growth of 581% percent from US$8.8 billion to US$60 billion, eclipsing that of all rival stablecoins combined. Tether’s daily trading volume now exceeds US$195 billion, according to data from CoinGecko.

“In the past few days, we’ve seen enormous volatility in the crypto markets,” said Paolo Ardoino, CTO at Tether. “While it’s not new for those of us who have seen several of these market cycles come and go, it did come as a shock to many of the newer entrants as billions of dollars worth of positions were liquidated throughout the weekend. During these extreme episodes, we’ve historically seen an uptick in stablecoin activity, made evident by Tether’s recent US$60 billion milestone as demand continues to grow. Events like these even support the ecosystem’s strength and help everyone refocus back to building rather than the distraction of token price gains.”

“Tether’s battle-tested stablecoin USDt is a structural innovation that broadens access to US dollars around the world, particularly to crypto-native applications,” said Gabor Gurbacs, Director of Digital Asset Strategy at VanEck. “I am impressed by Tether’s efforts to provide more transparency about their reserves as well as their ongoing collaborative work with major institutions and regulators.”

Institutional and corporate usage form the lion share of demand for USDt, with US$39 billion added since January 1, 2021. There is widespread recognition among both institutional and retail investors that USDt offers a faster, cheaper and more intuitive form of value.

“Critics watching on the sidelines should take a pause and ask themselves why the digital token space likes using Tether so much,” Ardoino added. “By the end of this decade, the nature of money and business will be in a very different place. The unprecedented success of Tether will in no small way be responsible for this journey.” 

USDt’s presence in the e-commerce and payments space is growing. USDt represents a superior medium of exchange in many use cases, and can offer lower transaction fees than wire transfers of fiat currency. USDt is supported by numerous e-commerce platforms and payment gateways, and already provides faster payment as compared to credit cards and traditional payment systems.

USDt works across a diversity of different blockchains, including Algorand, Bitcoin Cash’s Simple Ledger Protocol (SLP), Ethereum, EOS, Liquid Network, Omni, Tron and Solana. Tether is driven to support and empower growing ventures and innovation in the blockchain space.