The market capitalization of Tether's stablecoin #USDT exceeded $160 billion, confirming its status as a digital dollar, while the Tron blockchain continues to lead in issuance volumes.
The world's largest stablecoin Tether (USDT) has first reached a market capitalization of $160 billion. The company's CEO Paolo Ardoino called this event a "new impressive milestone" in his message on the X platform. He emphasized that USDT is becoming a digital dollar for billions of residents of emerging markets and countries. In May 2025, USDT's market capitalization first exceeded $150 billion.
According to Ardoino, USDT is used by more than 400 million people worldwide, with the number of wallets increasing by 35 million each quarter. The stablecoin is particularly actively used in emerging markets as a reliable alternative to the US dollar.
According to data from the analytics service DefiLlama, the largest volume of USDT is placed on the blockchain #Tron — about $81 billion. #Ethereum accounts for $65 billion, while other networks lag significantly behind: #bnb Chain — $6.8 billion, #solana — $2.3 billion, Polygon — $1.1 billion.
USDT is backed by cash dollars and US treasury bonds
Tether's report indicates that 81.5% of USDT reserves are in cash and cash equivalents, primarily short-term US treasury bonds. About 5.1% is backed by bitcoins.
As of the second quarter of 2025, Tether owns US treasury bonds worth over $127 billion. This volume is comparable to the sovereign issuances of countries such as South Korea and Germany. In the first quarter, the company reported an operating profit exceeding $1 billion.
Tether continues to actively issue new tokens. Just on Wednesday, $1 billion USDT was issued, and over the past week, the total issuance volume exceeded $4 billion.
Last week, the company announced the cessation of USDT support on five blockchains: Omni Layer, Bitcoin Cash SLP, Kusama, EOS (now Vaulta), and Algorand. As of September 1, 2025, redeeming tokens on these networks will become impossible. CEO Ardoino explained that this decision would allow a focus on more promising blockchains with better scalability, an active developer community, and high user engagement.
The stablecoin market is expanding amid growing transparency in regulation
The stablecoin market demonstrates steady growth, and digital assets pegged to fiat currencies are increasingly used for online transactions. In 2024, the total transaction volume with stablecoins surpassed the figures of payment systems Visa and Mastercard.
This growth occurs against the backdrop of increased attention from the Trump administration to regulating stablecoins, particularly to the GENIUS Act. The bill received bipartisan support in the Senate Banking Committee and was passed by the upper chamber in June. However, its consideration in the House of Representatives was temporarily halted after a key procedural vote was blocked.
