Tether (USDT) holders are moving into alternate coins, as USDT has been trading down as much as 2.59% over the past 24 hours, while Bitcoin (BTC) and the top altcoins started moving in the other direction with BTC rising sharply in early-morning trading on Monday, spiking to over $7,000.
Allegedly backed 1:1 by the US dollar, Tether touched $.85 on Kraken and $.96 on Binance, according to data by CoinMarketCap, while Bitcoin broke from its $6,250 range to soar above $7,000. Shortly after 3:00 a.m. EST, Bitcoin was trading on Binance for $7,390 with a 24-hour high of $7,680.
Following Bitcoin’s sharp Monday morning spike, crypto exchanges OKEx and KuCoin announced listings for additional stablecoins. OKEx, currently the second-largest exchange by volume for Tether and the third-largest for Bitcoin, listed TrueUSD (TUSD), Gemini Dollar (GUSD), Paxos Standard Token (PAX) and USD Coin (USDC), the stablecoin from Goldman Sachs’-backed startup Circle.
KuCoin announced listings for Paxos, TrueUSD and USDC.
Tether, the most dominant stablecoin in the crypto markets, continues to be a controversial stablecoin as many analysts, researchers and industry leaders have doubted the cash deposits that allegedly peg USDT to the US dollar.
[the_ad id="42537"] [the_ad id="42536"]Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum and founder of ConsenSys, does believe that Tether is backed by the dollar but still doubts its long-term strength.
“Based on our analysis, which involves just talking to a bunch of people in the space, we do believe that Tethers are backed 1:1 by US dollars in bank accounts. But it’s still not 100% solid in terms of a story, from my perspective.
I expect many other price-stable tokens will arise and take its place.”
Detractors have not stopped Tether and its supporters from propelling it into a top digital asset. As one of the most traded coins, it accounts for nearly 25% of all crypto trades in the past 24 hours, surpassed only by Bitcoin.
BTC and Tether Dominance
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Phil Potter, the chief strategy officer for Tether and cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex, who stirred concerns about a conflict of interest between the two entities, stepped down from his roles at both companies in June.
Without further disruptions, Timothy Tam, co-founder and CEO of CoinFi, a cryptocurrency research firm, tells Bloomberg he believes the issues surrounding Tether are “probably a bit of paranoia” and that “this will all clear up relatively soon.”
Meanwhile Bitfinex, which temporarily paused fiat deposits “for certain customer accounts in the face of processing complications,” issued a statement on Monday that fiat deposits and withdrawals for USD, GBP, JPY and EUR are all functioning normally.
Fiat deposit update – October 15th, 2018. https://t.co/F8o2ltVCN4 pic.twitter.com/ukE9JsRB0j
— Bitfinex (@bitfinex) October 15, 2018
As for Bitcoin’s volatility, it is currently trading at $6,675 at time of writing, retaining gains from the recent spike.
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