Stablecoins have become an essential part of the crypto industry. The crypto dollars have been useful for people outside of US, where their local currency is not performing at best. More people and businesses are starting to accept and work with crypto dollars. We are witnessing a whole new sector emerging in the crypto industry, and there seems to be a lot of interest from a lot of players to enter the game. Paypal has been one of the new brands entering the in the market with its pyUSD in 2024. There is even an official stablecoin act now with the US government, that should boost the sector even more.
How is the dominant and the incumbent in the industry doing in the last period when the crypto prices are down? Let’s take a look!
Tether started its journey back in 2015 and allegedly it was founded by the Bitfinex exchange.
A lot can be said about Tether, a history with controversy, mainly around the fractional dollar reserves, or is every USDT backed by equal amounts held in banks accounts. There have been court cases etc, but up until now Tether has been able to manage the situation and keep growing.
One of the biggest wins for Tether is the way they handled 2022 and all the moments when projects collapsed, causing domino effects. On a few occasions there were massive amount of withdrawals initiated in a short amount of time. A massive 15B were withdrawn from Tether during the stablecoins crisis in May 2022, and later the collapse of FTX as well. Some other crises are in between as well.
Tether successfully handled all the withdrawals and the crisis in between. A massive real market test that it passed.
With this said, let’s take a look at the data for USDT.
Daily Tether Printed
Here is the chart for the USDT printed per day.
As we can see in the first years there was not a lot of printing for USDT. The larger amounts started to come in 2020 and increased significantly in 2021.
On occasions there was more than 2B USDT issued or burned per day. We can notice a few spikes down in 2022, some of them with more than 5B on a day. In the last period in 2025 we can see a positive bars, but some negatives again in 2026.
When we zoom in 2024-2026 we get this:
In 2024 and 2025 we can see mostly positive daily bars for Tether, while a negative ones started coming in 2026.
There was a higher growth in the Tether supply towards the end of 2024, but then a slightly drop in January 2025. Since then, mostly there are positive daily bars for the Tether supply in 2025. In 2026 we have a slow down.
Monthly USDT Printed
Here is the monthly chart.
A new record for monthly USDT was issued in November 2024. A total of 13B USDT was issued in this month! Quite the achievement. This is the period when the Bitcoin price surpassed 100k for the first time, so the Tether issuance followed that trend. Positive bars in every months since then up to the last two months.
When we zoom in 2024-2026 we have this:
We can see that November 2024 was great for Tether.
In November and December of 2025 we still have positive bars, but much lower ones than previously and in January and February 2026 we have negative bars.
Tether Supply
The chart for the USDT supply looks like this.
A big increase in 2020 – 2021 period, reaching 83B in market cap in the beginning of 2022. Then in May 2022 a big drop, and in the summer of 2022, the market cap of Tether was around 67B.
Since 2023, there has been almost constant growth in the Tether supply, reaching new ATH up to October 2025. Since then there is a slowdown and a small drop from 185B to 180B where we are now.
The 100B mark was passed at the beginning of March 2024.
USDC VS USDT
How is Tether doing against the number one competitor USDC? USDC has come a bit later to the scene, so it has some catching up to do.
Here is the chart.
Up until May 2022, both stablecoins had a similar pattern. Then TerraUST happened and the market cap for Tether decreased while the market cap for USDC increased. This short lived as Tether regain its growth, while USDC kept going down.
During the bear market these two moved in opposite directions. In the last year the trend changed and now both of the stablecoins started growing again with Tether growing faster than USDC.
In the last period both have slowdown, meaning that they are moving in the same direction now.
The market share of these two looks like this:
The current share of these two is 70% to 30%. Previously USDC was closest to Tether in the summer of 2022 where it reached 45% share.
