Tether Growth While Trading Falls Adds to Stablecoin’s Mystique

Tether’s ability to increase its market capitalization while crypto trading volume remaining lackluster is adding to the ambiguity that surrounds the dominant stablecoin.

That’s the view of researcher Kaiko, which pointed out Monday that this year’s jump in market cap has little correlation with overall volume, “which is questionable considering the primary use case for this stablecoin is trading.”

Tether didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

The stablecoin, which aims to maintain a one-for-one peg with the dollar for its USDT token, is valued at $82.9 billion, according to data tracker CoinMarketCap. The amount reached a peak of ...