USDT

Stablecoin Economy Surges Past $150B, Stablecoins Command Over 50% of Global Crypto Trade Volume

26/11/2021 by Idelto Editor

A great number of digital currencies have swelled in value this year and as the end of 2021 approaches, the market capitalization of all 11,000+ crypto assets in existence is roughly $2.6 trillion. These days, it’s safe to say that dollar-pegged tokens, otherwise known as stablecoins, have a strong presence in the crypto market. Today the market capitalization of all the stablecoins in the world is more than $152 billion or 5.84% of the crypto economy’s USD value.

Stablecoins Have Seen Massive Growth Within the Crypto Economy

Stablecoins have been a hot topic in the cryptocurrency world as the growth of these dollar-pegged tokens in 2021 has been quite significant. Basically, a stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency that leverages the value of an external reference such as the U.S. dollar or another fiat currency.

The largest stablecoin today in terms of market capitalization is tether (USDT) as its current market valuation is $73.95 billion. During the last 30 days, USDT’s market valuation has increased by 3.9%. The second-largest stablecoin in terms of market capitalization is usd coin (USDC) with $37.6 billion, increasing by 15.2% in 30 days.

2 Dollar-Pegged Tokens Represent 73% of Stablecoin Economy, Stablecoin Trading Pairs Dominate

While the stablecoin market valuation is $152 billion, USDT and USDC combined command $111.55 billion or 73.38% of the stablecoin economy. While USDC’s market cap jumped more than USDT’s, it wasn’t the biggest increase last month within the top ten stablecoin standings. The stablecoin terra usd (UST) saw its market cap jump by 164.1% and frax (FRAX) increased by 119%. The stablecoin magic internet money (MIM) swelled by 56.8% and liquity usd (LUSD) increased by 49%.

The presence of stablecoins is strong and during the last 24 hours, stablecoin trade volume was more than 50% of the crypto economy’s global trade volume. Bitcoin (BTC) markets alone show tether (USDT) represents 52.63% of all BTC swaps today and the stablecoin issued by Binance called BUSD commands 7.05% of BTC’s trade volume. USDC is the seventh-largest trading pair with BTC and captures 1.75% of all BTC swaps.

Ethereum (ETH) markets are not much different as USDT represents 45.11% of today’s ether trading pairs. BUSD represents 9.60% of all BTC swaps on Friday and USDC commands 1.68%. Whether crypto markets are bearish or bullish, stablecoins like USDT, BUSD, and USDC have been BTC’s and ETH’s top trading pairs in 2021, alongside fiat currencies like USD, JPY, and EUR. The same can be said for a great majority of the top coins in the crypto economy, as stablecoin pairs represent a large portion of trades these days.

What do you think about the swelling stablecoin economy? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

US Senator Asks Coinbase, Gemini, Binance, Tether How They’re Protecting Consumers

25/11/2021 by Idelto Editor

U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown has sent letters to cryptocurrency exchanges and stablecoin issuers, including Coinbase, Gemini, Binance, and Tether, asking how they are protecting consumers and investors. “I have significant concerns with the non-standardized terms applicable to redemption of particular stablecoins,” the senator said.

US Senator Raises Concerns Regarding Stablecoins

U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban, announced Tuesday that he has sent letters to a number of crypto exchanges and stablecoin issuers.

Among the recipients of his letters are Coinbase, Gemini, Paxos, Trusttoken, Binance.us, Centre, and Tether.

The senator asked these crypto companies how they “are protecting consumers and investors amid the risks highlighted in the recent report by the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets.”

The announcement adds: “Senator Brown emphasized the difficulties consumers and investors may face in understanding how stablecoins work and their potential risks, citing the complicated terms and conditions that many companies hide in the fine print.” The senator wrote in one of his letters:

I have significant concerns with the non-standardized terms applicable to redemption of particular stablecoins, how those terms differ from traditional assets, and how those terms may not be consistent across digital asset trading platforms.

The senator asserted that “the purchase of stablecoins through a trading platform may not provide customers with the same rights and entitlements as a direct purchase from an issuer.”

Furthermore, he noted: “Customers may have different rights based on the amount of stablecoins owned or transacted.” Senator Brown also asked six more questions in his letters which can be found here.

What do you think about Senator Sherrod Brown asking crypto exchanges and stablecoin issuers about how they are protecting consumers and investors? Let us know in the comments section below.

Bitcoin Dominance Slides Below 40% for First Time in 6 Months

25/11/2021 by Idelto Editor

During the last week, the price of bitcoin has been hovering below the $60K range and digital currency advocates are wondering which way the market is headed next. At the time of writing, the crypto economy is valued at $2.81 trillion and bitcoin’s market dominance has sunk below the 40% region for several days now.

Bitcoin Dominance Slips to 39.7%, While Ethereum Dominance Commands 19%

The price of bitcoin (BTC) reached $69K on November 10, and six days later on the 16th, the price fell below the $60K zone and hasn’t returned above that region since then. Today, according to crypto coin market aggregators there are around 11,117 coins being traded on 525 cryptocurrency exchanges. The value of all more than 11K crypto coins in existence is around $2.81 trillion and it increased in value 3.9% over the last 24 hours.

Bitcoin (BTC) has an overall market capitalization of around $1.1 trillion and on Thursday, November 25, BTC dominance is 39.7%. BTC’s dominance has not been this low since mid-May 2021, or around six months ago. The last time it was lower than 40% prior to the mid-May drop was three years ago on June 17, 2018. Statistics from Coingecko.com indicate that the second leading crypto asset, ethereum (ETH), has around 19% of the market dominance on Thursday. Ether has a market valuation of around $525 billion at the time of writing.

While ethereum (ETH) has a significant portion of dominance, a slew of other crypto assets in the top 20 positions have also been swelling in value and increasing their own dominance levels. Binance coin (BNB) commands 4.02% of the $2.81 trillion crypto economy and the stablecoin tether (USDT) captures 2.74%. Solana (SOL) has increased in value a great deal this year and currently, SOL commands 2.43% of the crypto economy’s overall value. Cardano (ADA) is another that holds more than 2% as ADA’s market valuation on Thursday is 2.13% of the crypto economy.

11,116 Crypto Assets Command $1.71 Trillion in Fiat Value

Only five other crypto assets command more than 1% of the crypto economy’s fiat value and six coins have more than 0.5% of the $2.81 trillion in value. Interestingly, bitcoin (BTC) dominance held above the 60% range for two months this year, but BTC dominance slipped below 60% at the end of February. Another interesting factoid is that BTC dominance held above the 80% region during its whole lifetime (minus a few brief instances) up until the end of February 2017.

BTC’s dominance has never returned back above the 80% region but did reach 70% on January 3, 2021, the network’s 12th anniversary. Bitcoin has a lot more competition than it did in the early days, as before 2013 there were only a few hundred competitors. By the time BTC slid below the 80% dominance range in 2017, there were a few thousand alternative digital assets. Still, BTC is holding its own with $1.1 trillion in fiat value while 11,116 crypto assets hold $1.71 trillion in fiat value.

What do you think about bitcoin’s dominance sinking below the 40% zone? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Ethereum Has Burned More Than a Million ETH Over the Last 3 Months

24/11/2021 by Idelto Editor

111 days ago, the Ethereum network implemented the London hard fork upgrade which added a mechanism (EIP-1559) that changed Ethereum’s fee rate to a new scheme that makes the crypto asset ether deflationary. Since then 1 million ether has been burned or the equivalent of around $3.8 billion worth of ethereum using today’s exchange rates.

Over a Million Ether or $3.8 Billion Burned to Date

The second-largest crypto asset in terms of market capitalization, ethereum (ETH) has an overall valuation today just above $500 billion. Ethereum’s market capitalization represents 18.8% of the $2.7 trillion crypto economy. Three months ago, on August 5, 2021, the Ethereum blockchain upgraded and added various features to the consensus rules. The most transformative included EIP-1559 and EIP-3554, and EIP-1559 in particular created a new fee rate scheme that allows the network to burn a portion of ether.

EIP-1559’s summary hosted on Github states:

There is a base fee per gas in protocol, which can move up or down each block according to a formula which is a function of gas used in parent block and gas target (block gas limit divided by elasticity multiplier) of parent block. The algorithm results in the base fee per gas increasing when blocks are above the gas target, and decreasing when blocks are below the gas target. The base fee per gas is burned.

Since the new feature was introduced, metrics from Dune Analytics indicate 1,001,212 ether or $3.8 billion worth of ethereum using today’s exchange rates has been burned.

At the time of writing, etherscan.io’s API which shows the circulating ETH supply indicates that there’s 118,472,428 ether in existence today. The biggest ethereum burner today is still the non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace Opensea with 110,081 ether or $398 million burned to date.

The burning stemming from Opensea usage took place across 7,941,975 ethereum transfers. Regular ethereum transfers are tethered to 94,800 ETH burned since the upgrade in August. The decentralized exchange (dex) platform Uniswap V2 (version 2) is the third-largest ethereum burner since the upgrade. 92,239 ether or $373 million worth of ethereum using today’s exchange rates has been burned stemming from Uniswap V2 usage.

The stablecoins tether (USDT) and usd coin (USDC) also contribute to a lot of ethereum burning. While tether (USDT) is the fourth largest burner behind Uniswap V2, USDC is the seventh-largest ethereum burner today. Tether across 11,499,787 transfers has attributed to 53,988 ether burned or $210 million. USDC has contributed to the burning of 20,042 ether today or $77 million. Other applications like Metamask, 1inch, Sushiswap, and Axie Infinity also contribute to a lot of ether burning.

What do you think about the 1 million ether burned since August 5? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Avalanche Value Surges Reaching an All-Time High, AVAX Joins the Top Ten Crypto Markets

21/11/2021 by Idelto Editor

Cryptocurrency markets have started to recuperate from last week’s losses as bitcoin, ethereum, and a slew of digital assets have seen slight gains. However, the cryptocurrency avalanche has seen its value skyrocket this past week 46.9% higher over the last seven days. Avalanche has also crept into the top ten digital asset market valuations with its $31.5 billion market cap. On November 21, avalanche tapped an all-time price high at $144 per unit as the crypto asset has gained a whopping 3,795% in 12 months.

Avalanche Value Spikes Over 20% Over the Last 24 Hours

The crypto asset avalanche (AVAX) has increased a great deal over the last 24 hours jumping in value more than 21%. Besides gala (GALA), avalanche is the biggest crypto asset gainer during the last day. On Sunday, AVAX reached an all-time high (ATH) at over $144 per unit and has entered the top ten cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. AVAX’s market is just below the stablecoin market usd coin’s (USDC) $36.2 billion capitalization.

Seven-day statistics indicate that AVAX has climbed 46.9% in seven days, 83% in two weeks, over 133% during the last three months, and year-to-date, AVAX is up 3,795%. Tether (USDT) commands 63.84% of today’s AVAX swaps while the U.S. dollar has around 14.23% of AVAX trades. This is followed by trading pairs such as BTC (9.58%), BUSD (5.56%), TRY (3.86%), ETH (1.33%), and BNB (0.79%).

The most active crypto trading platform exchanging avalanche (AVAX) on Sunday is Binance. The exchange Binance is followed by Okex, Trader Joe, Huobi Pro, Bitfinex, and Coinbase in terms of AVAX trades. Defillama metrics show that AVAX holds the fourth-largest total value locked (TVL) in decentralized finance (defi) with $12.74 billion. In the last 24 hours, the TVL increased 10.85% and over the last week, it increased 20.95%.

The Avalanche-based decentralized exchange (dex) Trader Joe has seen a 34% increase in users over the last seven days and $1.1 billion in global trade volume. The dex Trader Joe is the second-largest platform in terms of trade volume below Uniswap’s $4.29 billion in weekly swaps. Trader Joe is also the sixth-largest defi protocol in terms of TVL with $2.59 billion total value locked on Sunday. Furthermore, Avalanche-based tokens like joe (JOE) and wonderland (TIME) have been rising in value alongside the native currency AVAX.

What do you think about Avalanche hitting an all-time high and making it into the top ten crypto assets in terms of market cap? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.