Binance: USDT market becomes combined stable coin market
Binance, the world’s largest adjusted volume crypto currency exchange, announced yesterday that its tether/USDT market will be renamed the Combined Stablecoin Market (USDⓈ). This will allow the Exchange to expand its support for a range of stablecoins which are becoming increasingly popular. Binance made it clear that USDⓈ is not a ticker for a stable coin.
Binance has increasingly expanded its trading platform in recent months to include other stable coins such as TrueUSD (TUSD), Paxos Standard Token (PAX) and most recently USD Coin (USDC), which climbed to 30th place in the ranking of the largest crypto currencies by market capitalization.
It seems that Binance – whose CEO, Changpen Zhao, has recently criticized the role of tether in the cryptographic market – now wants to strengthen some of the alternatives to tether. As the statement states, the aim is to “support more couples” and thus remove part of the focus from the current market leader. In the opinion published yesterday it says:
Binance has renamed the USDT market (USDT) to a combined stable coin market (USDⓈ). This is intended to support more trading pairs with different stablecoins offered as base pairs. We will shortly make another announcement of the exact pairs that will be postponed or added to this market initially. Please note that USDⓈ is not a new stable coin: it is the symbol for Binance’s new stable coin market.
Tether loses dominance
While Tether (USDT) still dominates the volume in the crypto world and at Binance, considerable problems have been revealed in recent weeks with maintaining its stable value in relation to the US dollar – due to rumours of banking problems and whether the company behind Tether actually has the necessary reserves.
In mid-October, the price of the coin fell to USD 0.95. At the beginning of the month, another downturn to the same price followed. This has led to the phenomenon known in the crypto world as “The Tether Premium”, which describes Bitcoin’s increased price on exchanges that do not accept Fiat deposits and rely heavily on Tether. The Tether Premium can currently still be observed at Bitfinex, where the Bitcoin price is around 140 USD above the average price.
Binance seems to be looking for alternatives to the problem of the plagued USDT and wants to broaden its position. After Tether has withdrawn nearly one billion USDT from circulation since mid-October – the number of USDT has fallen from around 2.8 billion to 1.856 billion USDT – Binance’s measure could mean a further weakening of Tether.
