Tether’s USDT has always been a very interesting currency for many reasons. It is supposed to be pegged to the US dollar at a 1:1 ratio, which has created some speculation as to how the company can keep the price at that level. Indeed, the value of USDT hardly ever shifts, even though it is slightly above US$1 right now. What is of great interest are its current trading volume and the USDT price increase compared to both Bitcoin and OMNI.
USDT Price Outclasses Bitcoin and OMNI
The one boring thing about stablecoins such as Tether’s USDT is that they hardly ever fluctuate in value. In the case of USDT, its value will always remain at or around US$1. Right now, the USDT price is listed as US$1.01, even though people will only get 1 US dollar for every USDT they sell. It’s an interesting form of currency, even though there are still a lot of questions regarding Tether’s financial situation right now.
More specifically, a lot of people are still waiting for an independent audit of the company’s financial records. Its prior “partnership” with Friedman LLP was suddenly dissolved without any audit taking place. To this day, it remains a bit unclear why this happened and whether or not Tether will look for another firm to provide auditing services. Until it does so, the company will continue to face a lot of backlash on social media due to its “shady” operations. No one is guilty until proven so, however.
One would expect these growing concerns regarding Tether to negatively impact the demand for USDT. After all, the company has been bringing more USDT into circulation whenever the Bitcoin price has started tanking. One would expect this company alone to have been able to sustain indefinite Bitcoin price growth. So far, that has not happened, as the Bitcoin price is down over 32% in the past seven days.
No one can blame the USDT trading volume for this particular development, though. There is such high demand to both buy and sell USDT right now, its trading volume has surpassed US$3 billion over the past 24 hours. At this rate, Tether’s stablecoin will easily overtake Ethereum in terms of volume. While not completely unheard of, this does show that all cryptocurrency markets are heading in a very peculiar direction as of right now. While Tether’s USDT is the third-largest currency by volume, it remains to be seen if this is a positive trend in general.
When looking at the biggest trading markets for USDT, it is no surprise that Bitcoin and Ethereum take the cake at any given moment. OKEX’s BTC and ETH markets are both in the top three. Binance’s BTC and ETH markets are ranked second and fourth. Huobi’s ETH and BTC markets are among the top six as well. The first currency to buck this trend is Litecoin, which is also heavily traded against USDT on OKEX. In fact, OKEX is ranked a total of five times in the top 13 of USDT pairs. It’s an interesting trend well worth keeping an eye on.
It is also worth noting that USDT has maintained its price stability thanks to some solid gains against both Bitcoin and OMNI. With a 15.43% gain on BTC and a 19.87% increase against OMNI, it is evident that USDT is becoming the go-to solution for those who wish to increase their Bitcoin holdings. This is not without risk, though, as people need to trust Tether enough to allow them to trade back the USDT for Bitcoin or Ethereum in the future.
