Tether volume hits $600B as it attempts to take on Bitcoin as crypto’s benchmark

The latest data from analytics providers suggest that cumulative Tether transaction volume has just surpassed $600 billion as it begins to dominate crypto exchange trading.

On-chain analytics provider Glassnode has revealed that Tether transaction volume increased by around 20% over the past 30 days to reach that new cumulative milestone.

— glassnode alerts (@glassnodealerts) October 14, 2020

It should be noted, however, that this is a cumulative figure and not the daily transaction volume which is closer to $35 billion according to an average from Coingecko and Coinmarketcap.

The same two analytics providers report Bitcoin’s daily transaction volume at between $20 and $25 billion which gives Tether a clear lead for this metric.

In terms of supply, USDT has grown by almost 300% since the beginning of this year when there were just 4 billion in circulation. Today, that figure is just below $16 billion according to the Tether Transparency report. The ERC-20 standard still dominates the USDT supply with almost 65% of all Tether living on the Ethereum blockhom.

Additionally, analytics provider Skew noted that futures contracts based on Tether have now caught up with those based on Bitcoin. It said there was:

“Strong growth in USDT-margined futures contract this year, now almost on par with BTC-margined contracts on a daily basis,”

Other metrics for the world’s most popular stablecoin have also strengthened. Tether only accounted for only a tiny fraction of the trade volume in 2017, with the benchmark Bitcoin commanding over 50% of trades and fiat taking the rest. But in the plague ridden year of 2020, the situation is very different with as much as 70% of exchange trade volume denominated in USDT pairs.

Earlier this week, it was reported by Bloomberg that Tether’s market capitalization could actually surpass Ethereum’s by 2022. Currently, Tether’s market cap is around 38% of Ethereum’s but further growth for both is expected. In response to the report, Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino stated;

“Tether once again proves itself to be one of the most trusted assets in the crypto space.”

The stablecoin has achieved a number of major milestones this year, and it has all come during an ongoing court case with the New York Attorney General over the backing of the digital dollar. With Tether now interwoven into the fabric of the entire cryptosphere, there’s a lot riding on the outcome of that case.