Tether Surpassed XRP As The 3rd Largest Coin, But Retraced Again

The stablecoin Tether surpassed Ripple’s XRP token as the third largest cryptocurrency and was the second largest altcoin behind the Ethereum ETH at one time. However, the coin retraced shortly after its run and is now back at the fourth position.

Anyways, the cryptocurrency news showed that Tether surpassed XRP and the stablecoin USDT went on a rally to become the third biggest cryptocurrency in the moments leading into the Bitcoin halving.

The USDT price sat with a market cap of $8.79 billion and was bigger than XRP which had a market cap of $8.6 billion at the time. However, the figures changed and USDT is back at the 4th position.

The confirmaton about newly printed USDT came from the @Whale_Alert account on Twitter which shared a series of updates (you can see them below).

Even though it is normal for exchanges to hold large amounts of USDT, especially ahead of a big event like this halving, it is also considered a bullish sign for Bitcoin as investors may be preparing to buy crypto with USDT.

This is why Tether surpassed XRP on the charts. According to Brian Quinlivan who is a marketing and social media director at the crypto market data provider Santiment:

“Most USDT isn’t just being taken off exchanges to be stored in wallets or cashed out through a FIAT-based platform like Coinbase. When people aren’t using USDT, they most often put it in Bitcoin. And what’s cool is the fact that this USDT percentage often fluctuates a few hours or days in advance of BTC’s price reacting to it. So monitoring this metric in advance can end up producing a tremendous advantage by catching a sudden fluctuation early enough.”

The Tether news today show that USDT dwarfs other stablecoins by market capitalization, trading volume, users and a lot of other metrics. The stablecoin also expanded beyond the dollar and launched stablecoins pegged to the Chinese yuan, the CNHT, the Euro as well as gold.

In general, the stablecoin volume slowed down in April 2020 – but it is never too late for stablecoins to blossom again and be converted in other cryptocurrencies by users trading them around the world.