How Tether is beating Circle in the stablecoin race

The contest to be the top stablecoin has been dominated by two entrants: Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC.

When the crypto market crashed in May 2022, USDC came close to overtaking USDT after the latter briefly slipped its US dollar peg.

Since then, the market capitalisation of Circle’s offering has swooned.

A key reason? Investors shifted out of stablecoins into high-yielding US Treasury bonds after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates.

Meantime, Tether’s popularity in Asia has propelled its market cap to $84 billion, which is now three-and-a-half times greater than USDC, according to DefiLlama data.