109 million on-chain wallets hold USDT

Tether says it owns more than 109 million of the millions of on-chain wallets that will hold the USDT stablecoin by the end of the third quarter of 2024.

Millions of users currently use the Tether (USDT) stablecoin as their bank account, Tether noted in a blog post dated December 9. In October, the company published a report showing that 330 million users, represented by on-chain wallets and accounts, received USDT by the end of September 2024.

However, the report noted that many more users holding USDT are using it only off-chain. This means adoption of the world’s largest stablecoin by market cap is wider than stated data, Tether chief economic officer Philip Gradwell said.

USDT on-chain holders

As of the beginning of Q4 2024, there were 109 million users holding USDT in on-chain wallets. This figure dwarfs Bitcoin (BTC) wallets by more than double and isn’t far off from the 128 million wallets holding Ethereum (ETH) on-chain at the beginning of October.

In addition to the 109 million on-chain USDT wallets, Tether estimates that two-thirds of the wallets using stablecoins on centralized platforms are wallet holders, or approximately 56 million. Common details show that most crypto exchange users in emerging markets only use these platforms to buy, hold and transfer USDT on platforms like Binance, Coinbase and OKX.

A total of 165 million or more people hold stablecoins on-chain, according to the December 9 report. Tether noted that the constant reactivation of wallets during recurring payments shows that more users trust and value USDT’s service “as a store of value.”

Tens of millions of accounts can hold USDT on centralized exchanges and trading platforms.

Specifically, 18.7 million wallets hold USDT between 1 cent and $1, while 31.5 million wallets currently hold USDT between $1 and $1,000. Data shows that on-chain USDT wallets outnumber all other stablecoins by nearly 4x, with 54 million compared to competitors’ 13.8 million wallets.

The market cap of USDT was over $137 billion at the time of writing; This is more than three times that of its closest rival, USDC (USDC). USDC’s market cap is currently around $40 billion.