chepicap.com
Traders have now invested over $4 billion into stablecoins that are backed by the US Dollar, according to data from research journal Diar. This is a new all-time high for the dollar-pegged crypto market.
The data shows that $3.3 billion worth of Tether (USDT) is currently being held by crypto traders. A long way behind this total, $359 million is currently invested in USD Coin (USDC), and TrueUSD (TUSD) has around $243 million.
A slew of new stablecoins were launched in 2018 and early 2019, in the wake of increasing concerns about Bitfinex's management of Tether. Many have claimed that Tether may be insolvent, and the exchange hasn't been sufficiently transparent regarding its USD reserves it is keeping to back the stablecoin. Of the new dollar-pegged cryptos, Circle/Coinbase's USD Coin has seen the most growth. USDC has increased its market cap by 41 percent in 2019, and its trading volume has grown by 435%.
Despite the success of its newer competitors, Tether still leads the way in terms of trading volume. $366 billion of USDT has been traded so far in May, bringing the total for 2019 to $1.3 billion, which is already over $200 million higher than the total for all of 2018.