As a reminder, staplecoins are cryptocurrencies that are linked to the value of the US dollar. They allow traders to preserve the value of their portfolio during market crashes. That is, they sell their bitcoins, ethers, sols and other coins for USDT, USDC or other “stabbles”, and thus the dollar value of the investment portfolio will be the same until the cryptocurrencies are bought again.

We checked the current data: today, the capitalisation of all Stablecoins in the cryptocurrency market is $128 billion. It is important to note that on January 1, 2021, this figure was 29.06 billion, which means it has grown 4.4 times in less than ten months.

Stablecoin capitalisation in the cryptocurrency market

For clarity, here is a graph of the distribution of the shares of staplecoins in the total market capitalisation since the beginning of 2021. Blue here denotes USDT from Tether, while red represents USDC from Circle.

Stablecoin distribution in the cryptocurrency market

What are the problems with stabelcoins?

Here’s a quote from a Fitch Ratings publication mentioned by Decrypt. In it, representatives of the organisation share their view of the situation in the digital asset market.

Fitch Ratings believes that stablocoins, which are approaching systemic scale, could play an important role in short-term securities markets like commercial paper, bringing with them new risks.

That is, Fitch's staff makes it clear that they are concerned about the possible impact of USD-linked cryptocurrencies on the traditional sphere of finance.

Tether’s capitalisation growth for the year

The agency’s experts also added that “financial turbulence associated with stabelcoins” could disrupt the commercial paper market as well as “transfer risks to other markets”. Overall, analysts agree that the position of stablocoins globally will be heavily influenced by states’ regulation of the industry.

In particular, Tether, the world’s largest and best-known stabelcoin, is almost 50 per cent backed by commercial paper. Earlier this year, the company published a safeguards report that provided a breakdown of its balance sheet assets. Of Tether’s total capitalisation of $62.7 billion, $30.8 billion is represented by commercial paper and debt. Only 10 percent of the capitalisation is backed by cash.


By the way, the day before the USDT stabelcoin issuer faced an obstacle in the form of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The company was fined 41 million dollars, but the reason was inaccurate data about the security of the project. Read more about this topic in a separate article.

Dollar versus Bitcoin

Meanwhile, crypto is becoming increasingly popular in the former Soviet Union. According to brokerage firm BrokerChooser, Ukraine and Russia are leading in the rate of adoption of digital assets compared to the rest of the world. To calculate the adoption ranking, experts took into account the number of crypto holders in the country, statistics on relevant search queries, trends and so on.

Life of a crypto trader

Ukraine took the first place in the ranking with a score of 7.97 out of 10. Meanwhile, the second and third places went to Russia and the US, respectively. It is worth noting that in fourth place is a country experiencing significant economic difficulties – Kenya. This is highly expected because, as the study points out, people from developing countries often look to the digital asset industry as an alternative to a weak local currency.


We believe that the concerns of Fitch Ratings' experts appear to be exaggerated. After all, all staples are capitalised at $128 billion - a tiny fraction of the overall economy, which is valued at tens of trillions of dollars. Predicting a crisis precisely because of this asset class is therefore bizarre. At least for now, the prospects for such a thing seem tiny. There are more serious problems in the global economy too.