Tether has remained one of the dominant stablecoins in the cryptocurrency market. However, its dominance has been muddled with controversies. The latest one stems from Tether freezing three Ethereum-based USDT addresses reportedly holding over $150 million in the stablecoin.
According to Tether officials, this was done due to “a request from law enforcement.” This was the first blacklisting event for Tether in 2022, something it has been practicing since November 2017.
As per the representatives of the project, the freezing of addresses has helped them to recover funds stolen by hackers or even the ones that were compromised. However, this has given way to the community to question the control authorities have over the project.
When we talk bout controversies associated with Tether, decentralization played a big part. This was mainly due to the correlation USDT and Bitcoin have, which led to numerous pumps and dumps in the value of the largest cryptocurrency.
Nevertheless, the correlation between the two has decreased over time and currently, it was seen driving crypto-dollarization among fiat currencies, as per Paolo Ardoino, CTO of Tether.
Speaking of Tether’s dominance
The largest stablecoin was closing in on a $100B market cap and it was trying to become the ‘go-to’ stablecoin for crypto users. Circle’s USDC has established itself as the second-largest stablecoin in the market and as the two compete, we may see crypto-dollarization also grow.
This was presented in a report by Chainalysis, that noted since the Turkish lira unraveled against the dollar towards the end of 2021, cryptocurrency trading volumes leaped to an average of $1.8 billion a day across three exchanges. Tether was the leading stablecoin used to trade Lira and it outpaced the dollar and the euro as per data provided CryptoCompare.
Ardoino added on this development,
“tether is one of the main drivers of dollar dominance among fiat currencies and a driver for freedom. Tether is making giant steps to provide the inclusion, accessibility, and trust that people need.”
As we move ahead in the new year, we may see Tether blacklisting more such suspicious wallets. It would be interesting to see with technology escalating and metaverse and Web3 coming into the picture, how will stablecoins adjust and remain relevant.