XRP lost its position as the third-largest cryptocurrency

The Bitcoin halving finally took place yesterday, May 11th, and some consequences of the event are already visible.

XRP lost its third spot to Tether

While many expected that the consequences will concern Bitcoin itself, not much has happened as of yet. The coin saw a certain price drop, and then a recovery. However, one major development saw XRP lose its position as the third-largest crypto by market cap.

Its place was briefly occupied by Tether (USDT), which exceeded it, likely due to the halving itself.

At the time of writing, XRP once again took its rightful place as the third-largest coin. However, for a while, USDT managed to exceed XRP’s market cap, and climb up to $8.79 billion. Meanwhile, XRP sat at around $8.6 billion.

Right now, this is no longer the case, and XRP’s current market cap sits at $8.72 billion, while USDT once again has a m.cap of $6.37 billion.

The market cap rose due to the great demand for USDT, which increased its supply. Such huge inflows have seen in the past several weeks, more and more so as the halving approached.

A bullish sign for Bitcoin?

Of course, it is normal for exchanges to have a lot of USDT, especially when an event of the size of Bitcoin halving is expected to come. However, many believe that this might be a bullish sign. In other words, investors are not running away from BTC to USDT. Instead, they are making sure that they have USDT in order to start buying BTC as soon as the time is right.

Sentiment’s marketing and social media director, Brian Quinlivan, recently said as much. He noted that “Most USDT isn’t just being taken off exchanges to be stored in wallets or cashed out through a FIAT-based platform like Coinbase. When people aren’t using USDT, they most often put it in Bitcoin. And what’s cool is the fact that this USDT percentage often fluctuates a few hours or days in advance of BTC’s price reacting to it. So monitoring this metric in advance can end up producing a tremendous advantage by catching a sudden fluctuation early enough.“

Regardless of the reason, becoming the third-largest crypto, and second-largest altcoin is a huge deal for Tether. The stablecoin already towered over every other cryptocurrency of its kind, and now it has this achievement as well.

It has expanded to numerous blockchains, and it even went beyond USD, being pegged to other assets, such as the EUR, yuan, CNHT, and even gold.