Tether, the company behind the USDt (USDT) stablecoin, announced it had surpassed 350 million users on Oct. 7, just 10 years after its launch in 2014.
According to a blog post from the stablecoin issuer, Tether saw a user count increase of 24% for the past 12 months, indicating that it had approximately 282 million users in October 2023. Prior to that, in 2022, it boasted only half of that with around 141 million users.
Source: Tether
Stablecoins
While Tether can’t claim the title of being the first stablecoin — that distinction belongs to BitUSD and NuBits — it currently holds the highest market capitalization among all stablecoins by a large margin.
According to CoinMarketCap, the market capitalization of Tether’s USDt is currently $119.6 billion.
Top stablecoins by market capitalization. Source: CoinMarketCap
According to Tether, its position in the stablecoin market is a boon for digital assets as well as the United States dollar.
The company says its “substantial holdings of U.S. Treasuries further strengthen the dollar’s global influence, solidifying USD₮ as a trusted digital representation of the world’s reserve currency.”
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Per Tether:
“As of its Q2 2024 Attestation, Tether had direct and indirect exposure to over $97 billion in U.S. Treasuries. This makes Tether one of the top 20 largest buyers of U.S. Treasury bills, surpassing the holdings of countries like Germany, the United Arab Emirates, and Australia.”
350 million users
As Cointelegraph recently reported, the company is celebrating its 10th anniversary and will soon launch a documentary about its journey over the past decade featuring interviews with people whose lives have purportedly been affected by the stablecoin.
The majority of the company’s 350 million users appear to have come in the past few years, indicating that adoption rates are potentially accelerating.
To put the 350 million user milestone into perspective, a AAA study from 2024 estimated there are more than 560 million cryptocurrency users worldwide. While the AAA report from 2023 showed around 420 million users globally.
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