By When Bitcoin made its debut in 2009, it ushered a new era in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. It was the first cryptocurrency to be used and has since dominated the crypto market accounting for about 70% of all the digital-assets market value.
Its introduction has given births to other cryptocurrencies, altcoins. Such coins include Tether, Ethereum, etc. These coins have risen in market value, attracting billions of market investors. Tether, for example, has seen a surge in its market surpassing its patriarch, Bitcoin. This has therefore raised a pertinent question:
Is Bitcoin losing its grasp?
Bitcoin remains the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market cap, and the most expensive one, with the current price of $8,440. However, in recent comparisons of trading volume among the top coins, researchers had discovered that Tether leads as the most used cryptocurrency — with $20.7 billion in trading volume, whereas Bitcoin had $17.2 billion at the time
Historically, Tether has always been below Bitcoin in mostly all aspects. It has a much smaller market cap (30 times lower than bitcoin) and a price that is supposed to be permanently locked at $1. Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s price tends to make massive leaps up and down and is mostly influenced by the market sentiment. Bitcoin slumped, undoing some of this year’s epic rally and amplifying a recent trend of outsized weekend moves.
Something changed in April when Tether’s trading volume surpassed Bitcoin’s for the first time. Ever since then, the stable coin has been competing with the most significant cryptocurrency — mostly leading for around 18 per cent in terms of trading volume height.
With Tether’s monthly trading volume about 18% higher than that of Bitcoin, it’s arguably the most valuable coin in the crypto ecosystem. Tether’s also one of the main reasons why regulators regard cryptocurrencies with a wary eye and have put the brakes on crypto exchange-traded funds amid concern of market manipulation.
Researchers suggest that USDT or Tether is also very popular in China, as well as several other Asian countries. Cryptocurrencies are in relatively good standing in most East Asian countries, although the situation in China also remains controversial. Asian traders account for about 70% of all crypto trading volume, according to Allaire, and Tether was used in 40% and 80% of all transactions on two of the world’s top exchanges, Binance and Huobi, respectively, Coin Metrics said earlier this year.
With the current crypto race, Bitcoin’s mileage seems a high and soon other cryptocurrencies might overtake it. The future for cryptocurrency still remains a mystery.
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