Tether Surpasses Ripple’s XRP In Market Capitalization

Tether surpasses Ripple’s XRP in terms of market capitalization this week and now the dollar-pegged stablecoin is the third biggest cryptocurrency by market cap. Some of the factors that allowed this to happen included the traders’ flight-to-crash during the spreading Coronavirus pandemic panic as we reported in the Tether news previously.

In today’s altcoin news, we can see that Tether surpasses Ripple’s XRP and became the third-largest asset by market capitalization. USDT claims to protect traders from the extreme volatility-related with Bitcoin and other crypto-assets and the altcoin saw its valuation surpassing $7.5 billion. In the meantime, the size of the XRP market dropped below $5.5 billion as the prices dropped into negative territory on the year-to-date timeframe.

The rise in the market capitalization for Tether followed the flight to crash during the first quarter of 2020 as Messari reported. The data shows there was an increase in demand for stabelcoins especially for USDT during 2019, which indicated that the traders anticipated even more price volatility during the rest of the crypto market.

The sentiment was started during the ongoing macroeconomic crisis that is caused by the Coronavirus pandemic and the equities and commodities also crashed to their record lows back in March. They also prompted digital assets such as Bitcoin to start a similar downward trajectory. The crypto market capitalization dropped to $60.25 billion in March 2020 and Ripple’s XRP was one of the first victims of the crash.

On the other hand, the appetite for Tether surged and made it the top crypto beneficiary against the Coronavirus pandemic. The data from Messari shows that:

 “The largest beneficiary of the March volatility was Tether, fitting that the top 3 crypto assets now feature the top 3 verticals in blockchain technology: Money, DeFi, and Stablecoins.”

An analyst from Messari anticipated the demand for stablecoins to increase as the world comes face to face with the US dollar shortage. He said that USDT and other competitors including BUSD and USDT could even increase twice as much in 2020:

 “With the announcement of Libra and the growth of stablecoins last year, many consider 2019 as the year of stablecoins. But if trends from the past quarter persist, 2020 could very well give 2019 a run for its money.”