USDC v. USDT — Is this stablecoin nearing its ‘Circle’ of life?

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The sta­ble­coin mar­ket, like the rest of the cryp­tocur­ren­cy ecosys­tem, con­tin­ues to see new updates every day. Things changed rapid­ly, espe­cial­ly after Ter­raUSD [UST] came into the pic­ture only to crash and burn. Now, while some strug­gled to move on past the de-peg­ging event, oth­ers might have found a sol­id ground to stand on

Teth­er (USDT) has been the dom­i­nant force in sta­ble­coins for a few years now. How­ev­er, Tether’s clos­est rival, Circle’s USD Coin (USDC), might be the one mak­ing head­lines today.

Circle of ‘stable’ life 

Around five months ago, USDC sur­passed a mile­stone of 50 bil­lion USDC in cir­cu­la­tion. Despite the achieve­ment, USDT main­tained a sig­nif­i­cant gap over the rest of its com­peti­tors. Most­ly on the front of mar­ket cap­i­tal­iza­tion and the num­ber of dai­ly trans­ac­tions on the Ethereum [ETH] blockchain. Now, this gap may have tak­en a big hit.

Circle’s USD Coin (USDC) sta­ble­coin has FINALLY crossed Tether’s USDT by the num­ber of dai­ly trans­ac­tions on the Ethereum blockchain. Alex Svanevik, CEO of on-chain data hub Nansen, shared this mile­stone on Twit­ter too.

Source: Nansen

Circle’s dol­lar-pegged sta­ble­coin is yet to flip USDT by mar­ket cap. The two cryp­tocur­ren­cies are cur­rent­ly val­ued at $67.8 bil­lion and $55.5 bil­lion, respec­tive­ly. But, Teth­er might lose its foot­ing or even the bat­tle, giv­en the head­winds. On the oth­er hand, amidst this chaos, USDC found inter­est from investors in the market.

Terra’sUSD de-peg­ging and even­tu­al col­lapse sent shock­waves across the cryp­to-mar­ket. Major sta­ble­coins such as Teth­er [USDT] and USD Coin [USDC], and DAI saw major changes. USDT, in fact, still hasn’t achieved the $1‑peg as it cir­cled around the $0.99-mark at press time.

To make mat­ters worse, Tether’s Chief Tech­ni­cal Offi­cer Pao­lo Ardoino con­firmed the inci­dence of a DDoS attack. Here, Teth­er received 8M reqs/5 min­utes as opposed to the usu­al 2k reqs/5 min.

On the con­trary, USDC, at press time, main­tained its $1 peg on Coin­Mar­ket­Cap. In fact, USDC is the most-used sta­ble­coin of all when it comes to trans­fer­ring vol­ume, hold­ing a share of 51.5% on this front.

Teth­er and DAI only have shares of 25% and 11.4%, respectively.

Source: Dune Analytics

This marks an unprece­dent­ed hike for USDC, despite the chaos with­in the market.

Game, Set, Match? 

Well, not real­ly. Teth­er (USDT) isn’t giv­ing up just yet.USDT remains the top play­er in the sta­ble­coin mar­ket. That being said, reg­u­la­to­ry scars are a cause of alarm.

Teth­er has been at the receiv­ing end of severe back­lash because of its “back­ing.” It has faced sev­er­al law­suits over the past cou­ple of years. As a result, the firm’s efforts to pro­vide trans­paren­cy have failed to derail the bad press sur­round­ing it.

On the oth­er hand, Cir­cle, the reg­u­lat­ed cryp­to-focused finan­cial ser­vice firm behind the dol­lar-pegged sta­ble­coin, hasn’t faced such reg­u­la­to­ry hur­dles. Only time will tell how this com­pe­ti­tion will go.



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