Tether (USDT) on Tuesday, May 12 became the second largest altcoin after Ether (ETH) when it toppled Ripple (XRP) in market capitalisation.
This feat occurred just before Bitcoin’s third halving on Tuesday morning and disrupted the ranking that has seen ETH as second XRP as third for quite a while.
According to The Stablecoin Index, USDT has a market cap of $8.79 billion. XRP’s market cap is currently $8.75 billion.
Whale Alert (Twitter – @whale_alert) which tracks large cryptocurrency trades showed multiple USDT transactions from the Tether Treasury to unknown wallets. The transactions include one of 13,000,000 USDT (12,954,488 USD) and two separate trades of 16,000,000 USDT, 2 hours before.
Analysts believe the spike in USDT exchange was in anticipation of the Bitcoin halving as investors planned to buy more BTC with USDT. As at April 2020, USDT claimed a whopping 74% of all BTC traded into stablecoins or fiat. Today, that figure stands at an overwhelming 90%, further proving its popularity among BTC and altcoin investors.
Earlier this month, Tether went on another printing spree, pumping more USDT into the crypto market, much to the anger of the crypto community. At the time, the USDT’s total almost it $8 billion.
