Tether USDT temporarily briefly overtook Ripple‘s XRP to become the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
Tether USDT has been on a printing spree for the last few weeks that caused its market cap to soar above XRP’s. Tether’s printing campaign shows its dominance over the markets as its increasing issuance of USDT comes amid a decline in the volume of other USD-pegged stablecoins.
Tether USDT surpasses XRP, but only briefly
Tether overtook XRP on Tuesday, 12 May, however, the lead was shortlived as XRP soon regained its position as the 3rd largest crypto. At press time, XRP retains the third spot with a significant gap between its own and USDT’s market cap.
Tether gained the third spot after a prolonged period of token issuance by the Tether Treasury. As reported earlier by Cryptopolitan, the firm’s treasury has minted millions in USDT token, with about 40 million dollars worth of USDT being minted each day in April on average.
Tether’s own transparency figures report the asset’s total valuation at 8.6 billion dollars, with 1.6 billion dollars worth of USDT being minted at the start of May.
If Tether USDT continues its printing spree, the day might not be far when its market cap takes over the 3rd spot. Furthermore, XRP’s performance across the last week has been one of the worst among the top 10 cryptos by market cap. The asset lost 10 percent of its total value across the last week. The performance is second-worst to EOS, which lost 12 percent in the same period.
USDT maintains its dominance over other stablecoins, which was evident in its trading volume. The asset’s trading volume for 11 May was 79 billion dollars, while other leading stablecoins such as Paxos (PAX), USD Coin (USDC), and TrueUSD (TUSD) recorded volumes of 826 million, 628 million, and 546 million dollars respectively.
