Tether (USDT) Passes Stellar (XLM) as the Fourth Largest Digital Asset

The leading stablecoin’s market dominance has grown as other cryptocurrencies continue to fall.

Tether (USDT), the world’s largest stablecoin, has officially passed Stellar (XLM) in market cap to become the fourth-largest digital asset with a market cap of $1.86 billion.

USDT has risen in the rankings throughout the 2018 bear market that caused the majority of non-price-pegged cryptocurrencies and tokens to lose around 90% of their value.

Back in October, USDT hit a peak market cap of more than $2.8 billion before Tether began removing USDT from circulation. On October 24, the company burned 500 million USDT from its treasury wallet. In total, 680 million tokens have been transferred to the wallet since October 14, when the price of the dollar-pegged coin dropped below $0.95 following concerns about Bitfinex’s liquidity.

Tether currently denies that it is intentionally reducing the supply, as the redemption process is outlined in the whitepaper, but some skeptics believe that Bitfinex is liquidating BTC to fund the redemptions.

USDT’s market cap has surged from a mere $10 million at the beginning of 2017, but its dominance may already be starting to crack as new stablecoins begin to gain major exchange listings and mainstream adoption.