Tether’s USDT market cap falls below $70 billion for an 8-month low

Tether (USDT), the largest stablecoin and the third-largest digital currency by market capitalization, continues to lose its market value amid the current market downturn.

On Thursday, USDT’s market capitalization fell below $70 billion for the first time since October 2021. The decline followed a cascade of repeated declines shortly after USDT’s market value bottomed out. all-time high above $80 billion in May.

At the time of writing, the market capitalization of Tether USDT stands at $69.3 billion, up about $300 million from the multi-month low, according to data from CoinGecko.

Tether’s biggest rival, USDC, is the second-largest U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin backed by peer-to-peer payments technology firm Circle. The stablecoin reached a market cap of $50 billion in February and has never beaten Tether’s market cap so far.

While Tether has lost market share over the past few weeks, other stablecoins like USD Coin (USDC) have recently gained in value. Thus, USDC’s market capitalization has grown from around $48 billion in mid-May to $55 billion in mid-June.

Tether’s shrinking market cap comes amid market panic and uncertainty, with the market cap of all cryptocurrencies falling below $1 trillion for the first time since February 2021.

Related: Total stablecoin supply fell sharply for the first time in Q2

The Tether company has been actively releasing statements to assure investors that the company has not been affected by the current crypto lending crisis. On Monday, Tether said issues with crypto lending platform Celsius had nothing to do with the company and would not impact USDT reserves.

On Wednesday, Tether announced plans to get rid of commercial paper backed by the USDT stablecoin. The firm did not respond to UKTN’s request for comment.