Research from on-chain analytics provider Glassnode has revealed that the top three stablecoins represent more than 90% of the sector’s entire market cap. Glassnode’s Tuesday “The Week On-chain” report found that the top three stablecoins — Tether (USDT), USD Coin (USDC) and Binance USD (BUSD) — have seen significant growth over the past six months to represent a combined capitalization of more than $60 billion, equal to 92.75% of the stablecoin market. By contrast, six months ago, the combined stablecoin capitalization for those three was less than one-third of its current levels at $19.2 billion. This time last year, stablecoins …

Margin trading allows an investor to borrow money or cryptocurrency to leverage their trading position and increase its size or the expected return. For example, borrowing Tether (USDT) will allow one to buy Bitcoin (BTC), thus increasing the exposure. Although there’s an interest rate involved with borrowing, the trader expects BTC's price appreciation to compensate for it. Newer traders might be unaware of this, but investors can borrow BTC to margin trade a short position, thus betting on price downside. This is why some analysts monitor the total lending amounts of Bitcoin and Tether to gain insight into whether investors …

Nearly half a billion in Tether (USDT) inflows were recorded on April 8 across major Bitcoin (BTC) exchanges, based on Glassnode data. Considering that the inflows, the biggest since mid-March, coincided with a minor Bitcoin pullback, it indicates that buyers could be waiting to step in following BTC's price drop. Is a broader Bitcoin rally brewing? There are two major on-chain metrics that often signal a bigger Bitcoin rally is forming: BTC outflows and stablecoin inflows. Stablecoin inflows occur when traders deposit their sidelined funds to exchanges to buy back into cryptocurrencies. Meanwhile, large BTC outflows typically happen when high-net-worth …

The co-founder and CEO of Circle, Jeremy Allaire, has made a bold prediction that the company-issued stablecoin is on track to surpass payments giant PayPal in terms of transacted dollar value. The comments came in a tweet on Tuesday, in which Allaire alluded to the on-chain transaction volume for USD Coin (USDC) over the past year, which he reported as over half a trillion dollars. He added that this was already about half of the total payment volume for PayPal in 2020, hinting that a “flippening” could be coming soon. In the last year, there has been over half a …

Polkadot and Kusama users will benefit from a direct integration with Tether’s USDT when common good parachains launch. As announced by Tether on Tuesday, the stablecoin will launch both on Polkadot and Kusama, its cousin network. Tether (USDT) is the oldest stablecoin to reach significant adoption, and it has recently surpassed $40 billion in circulating supply. Though there have been concerns in the past for its reserve status, the company recently committed and followed through with periodic reserve audits. The timing of Tether’s release on Polkadot depends on its roadmap and the activation of parachains, the “shards” within the Polkadot …

Tether Holdings Limited, a company behind the world’s largest stablecoin Tether (USDT), has released an assurance opinion to confirm that Tether tokens are fully backed by its reserves. In a statement shared on Twitter Tuesday, Tether provided the company’s Consolidated Reserves Report, or CRR, accompanied by an assurance report from accounting network Moore Cayman. Signed on March 26, the accountant’s report intends to prove the accuracy of Tether’s CRR compiled on Feb. 28. “In our opinion, the CRR as prepared by the management of Tether Holdings Limited Group as of February 2021 at 11:59 PM UTC is presented in accordance …

Stablecoins like Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC) have hit another milestone in terms of accumulation by exchanges. According to market data provider CryptoQuant, stablecoin holdings on global crypto exchanges soared to a new all-time high on March 28, exceeding $10 billion. Cryptocurrency exchanges are now holding nearly 16% of the total market value of all stablecoins, with stablecoin market capitalization amounting to $63 billion at the time of writing, according to data from CoinGecko. The total trading volume of all stablecoins is estimated at about $88 billion. According to CryptoQuant data, volumes of stablecoin holdings on exchanges have been …

Tether (USDT), the world’s most liquid stablecoin, surpassed $40 billion in market capitalization on Wednesday, highlighting the rapid growth of cryptocurrency investing over the past year. At its highest point Wednesday, Tether’s market cap reached $40.1 billion, according to CoinGecko, making it the fourth-largest digital asset behind Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Binance Coin (BNB). In terms of stablecoin rankings, Tether is four times larger than the USD Coin (USDC), which has a market cap of around $10 billion. USDT dominance is currently around 67%, according to Messari. Tether’s market capitalization has grown by a factor of ten over the …

Stablecoin issuer Tether has announced that USDT tokens are launching today, March 9, on the Solana (SOL) blockchain. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Tether's chief technical officer said that the integration with the layer 1 blockchain promises to support a wide array of projects in the Decentralized Finance, or DeFi, sector and other Web 3.0. activities. As previously reported, Solana is being pitched as a competitor to Ethereum, with the hope of drawing DeFi actors into its network as they wait for the full benefits of Eth2 to finally kick in. According to Tether, Solana will enable users to transact USDT at …

Hackers have threatened to release sensitive company documents supposedly belonging to USDT stablecoin issuer Tether unless the firm sends a 500 Bitcoin (BTC) ransom to a specified address. As revealed by the official Twitter account for Tether on Sunday, hackers purportedly threatened to leak documents that would “harm the Bitcoin ecosystem” if their ransom demands were not met. Tether has already stated that it will not pay the ransom, which amounts to a dollar value of $23.8 million at the time of publication. The firm tweeted: “Today we also received a ransom demand for 500 BTC to be sent to …

A long-standing legal drama finally found resolution on Feb. 23, with the New York Attorney General’s office announcing that it had come to a settlement with cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex after a 22-month inquiry into whether the company had been trying to cover up its losses — touted to be worth $850 million — by misrepresenting the degree to which its Tether (USDT) reserves were backed by fiat collateral. According to the terms of the announced settlement, which now marks an end to the inquiry that was initiated by the NYAG back in Q1 2019, Bitfinex and Tether will pay the …

Every Friday, Law Decoded delivers analysis on the week’s critical stories in the realms of policy, regulation and law. Editor's note One day in the not-so-distant future, the curious experience of episodic television with its week-by-week gaps will be a weird thing that old people strain themselves not to talk about around the youths, until they eventually get, like, really old and stop caring and start turning all of the logistical inconveniences of their early memories into little moral parables. And by “they,” I mean me. And I’m looking forward to it. It’s possible that entertainment’s on-demand, all-the-time availability is …