The market capitalization of stablecoin Tether in November 2021 was roughly three billion U.S. dollars higher than it was one month before. In 2021, Tether ranks as one of the biggest cryptocurrencies in the world and is regarded as the most well-known "stablecoin", or cryptocurrency that is connected to the price development of another, real-world asset. This particular segment made up roughly half of the overall value locked in Decentralized Finance or DeFi.

A list containing 213 different stablecoins reveals that only *** of them had a market cap of over ** billion USD in 2025. The likes of Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC) are tied (pegged) to a "real-world" asset - in their case, the USD - whereas a coin like DAI is connected to the development of other cryptocurrencies. Algorithmic stablecoins have nearly no backing, but use an algorithm that creates more of a particular (crypto) asset within the same blockchain. Stablecoins as a group hit the news frequently in 2022, although only a few featured in a ranking of top 120 cryptocurrencies based on market cap. They are meant to be less volatile than, say, Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), or Shiba Inu (SHIB), or other virtual currencies susceptible to significant price swings. The price of the most well-known stablecoin, Tether (USDT), however, consistently hovers around a single USD as is tied (pegged) to the “real-world” U.S. dollar. As stablecoins are connected to physical currencies, they are not the same as Central Bank-Issued Digital Currencies or CBDC like the digital euro or China's e-CNY - which outright digitalize those same currencies.

Comprehensive Bitcoin holdings, market data, and treasury information for Tether Holdings Limited ()

The dominance of Tether (USDT) increased as of May 2025, although its market share in the crypto market was not as high as during the summer. Within the crypto world, this so-called "dominance" ratio is one of the oldest and most investigated metrics available. It measures the coin's market cap relative to the overall crypto market - for instance, it shows how strong Bitcoin is compared to all the other cryptocurrencies that are not BTC, called "altcoins".

The share of stablecoins within the overall crypto market was below that of Ethereum (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC). This would mark a significant rise of the digital asset, as earlier calculations from December 2021 indicated a stablecoin market share of ***** percent. What may play a part in these figures is that "regular" cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum saw a significant decline in price between May and June 2022 - leading to their market cap to decline as well. Fiat-backed stablecoins like Tether, USD Coin and Binance USD, on the other hand, were not as impacted. That said, the crash of algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD and its token Terra (LUNA) led to much uncertainty on whether non-fiat backed stablecoins could work.

Tether and USD Coin form the majority of the overall stablecoin market, whilst algorithmic stablecoins are but a fraction of their size. Estimates are that Tether (USDT) alone - the most well-known stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar - makes up nearly **** of the stablecoin market cap in June 2022. The top three of these digital assets are all connected to the performance of the U.S. dollar, with Dai (DAI) being pegged to a different cryptocurrency, its so-called governance token MKR or Maker. Algorithmic stablecoins - cryptocurrencies that do not use fiat currencies or other cryptocurrencies as their backing but instead rely on an algorithm to keep their price stable, similar to the design of TerraUSD (UST) and Terra (LUNA) - do not feature in the top five. FRAX combines elements of an algorithmic design but still contains a partial backing by collateral.

Cryptocurrency historical datasets from January 2012 (if available) to October 2021 were obtained and integrated from various sources and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) including Yahoo Finance, Cryptodownload, CoinMarketCap, various Kaggle datasets, and multiple APIs. While these datasets used various formats of time (e.g., minutes, hours, days), in order to integrate the datasets days format was used for in this research study. The integrated cryptocurrency historical datasets for 80 cryptocurrencies including but not limited to Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Binance Coin (BNB), Cardano (ADA), Tether (USDT), Ripple (XRP), Solana (SOL), Polkadot (DOT), USD Coin (USDC), Dogecoin (DOGE), Tron (TRX), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC), EOS (EOS), Cosmos (ATOM), Stellar (XLM), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), Uniswap (UNI), Terra (LUNA), SHIBA INU (SHIB), and 60 more cryptocurrencies were uploaded in this online Mendeley data repository. Although the primary attribute of including the mentioned cryptocurrencies was the Market Capitalization, a subject matter expert i.e., a professional trader has also guided the initial selection of the cryptocurrencies by analyzing various indicators such as Relative Strength Index (RSI), Moving Average Convergence/Divergence (MACD), MYC Signals, Bollinger Bands, Fibonacci Retracement, Stochastic Oscillator and Ichimoku Cloud. The primary features of this dataset that were used as the decision-making criteria of the CLUS-MCDA II approach are Timestamps, Open, High, Low, Closed, Volume (Currency), % Change (7 days and 24 hours), Market Cap and Weighted Price values. The available excel and CSV files in this data set are just part of the integrated data and other databases, datasets and API References that was used in this study are as follows: [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/ [2] https://coinmarketcap.com/historical/ [3] https://cryptodatadownload.com/ [4] https://kaggle.com/philmohun/cryptocurrency-financial-data [5] https://kaggle.com/deepshah16/meme-cryptocurrency-historical-data [6] https://kaggle.com/sudalairajkumar/cryptocurrencypricehistory [7] https://min-api.cryptocompare.com/data/price?fsym=BTC&tsyms=USD [8] https://min-api.cryptocompare.com/ [9] https://p.nomics.com/cryptocurrency-bitcoin-api [10] https://www.coinapi.io/ [11] https://www.coingecko.com/en/api [12] https://cryptowat.ch/ [13] https://www.alphavantage.co/

This dataset is part of the CLUS-MCDA (Cluster analysis for improving Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis) and CLUS-MCDAII Project: https://aimaghsoodi.github.io/CLUSMCDA-R-Package/ https://github.com/Aimaghsoodi/CLUS-MCDA-II https://github.com/azadkavian/CLUS-MCDA

This dataset contains historical price data for the top global cryptocurrencies, sourced from Yahoo Finance. The data spans the following time frames for each cryptocurrency:

BTC-USD (Bitcoin): From 2014 to December 2024 ETH-USD (Ethereum): From 2017 to December 2024 XRP-USD (Ripple): From 2017 to December 2024 USDT-USD (Tether): From 2017 to December 2024 SOL-USD (Solana): From 2020 to December 2024 BNB-USD (Binance Coin): From 2017 to December 2024 DOGE-USD (Dogecoin): From 2017 to December 2024 USDC-USD (USD Coin): From 2018 to December 2024 ADA-USD (Cardano): From 2017 to December 2024 STETH-USD (Staked Ethereum): From 2020 to December 2024

Key Features:

Date: The date of the record. Open: The opening price of the cryptocurrency on that day. High: The highest price during the day. Low: The lowest price during the day. Close: The closing price of the cryptocurrency on that day. Adj Close: The adjusted closing price, factoring in stock splits or dividends (for stablecoins like USDT and USDC, this value should be the same as the closing price). Volume: The trading volume for that day.

Data Source:

The dataset is sourced from Yahoo Finance and spans daily data from 2014 to December 2024, offering a rich set of data points for cryptocurrency analysis.

Use Cases:

Market Analysis: Analyze price trends and historical market behavior of leading cryptocurrencies. Price Prediction: Use the data to build predictive models, such as time-series forecasting for future price movements. Backtesting: Test trading strategies and financial models on historical data. Volatility Analysis: Assess the volatility of top cryptocurrencies to gauge market risk. Overview of the Cryptocurrencies in the Dataset: Bitcoin (BTC): The pioneer cryptocurrency, often referred to as digital gold and used as a store of value. Ethereum (ETH): A decentralized platform for building smart contracts and decentralized applications (DApps). Ripple (XRP): A payment protocol focused on enabling fast and low-cost international transfers. Tether (USDT): A popular stablecoin pegged to the US Dollar, providing price stability for trading and transactions. Solana (SOL): A high-speed blockchain known for low transaction fees and scalability, often seen as a competitor to Ethereum. Binance Coin (BNB): The native token of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, used for various purposes within the Binance ecosystem. Dogecoin (DOGE): Initially a meme-inspired coin, Dogecoin has gained a strong community and mainstream popularity. USD Coin (USDC): A fully-backed stablecoin pegged to the US Dollar, commonly used in decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. Cardano (ADA): A proof-of-stake blockchain focused on scalability, sustainability, and security. Staked Ethereum (STETH): A token representing Ethereum staked in the Ethereum 2.0 network, earning staking rewards.

This dataset provides a comprehensive overview of key cryptocurrencies that have shaped and continue to influence the digital asset market. Whether you're conducting research, building prediction models, or analyzing trends, this dataset is an essential resource for understanding the evolution of cryptocurrencies from 2014 to December 2024.

The market cap of Tether, which is backed by both USD and crypto, was much higher on May 19, 2025 than that of other crypto-collateralized stablecoins, such as Resolv USR. For many people, stablecoins are associated with fiat currencies - especially the U.S. dollar - although they have other ways to maintain their stability. Crypto-backed stablecoins, for instance, try to maintain an excess supply of another cryptocurrency - often Ethereum (ETH). Dai, for example, before it got replaced with USDS, required at least *** times its own value in collateral, meaning it needs a deposit of at least ***** U.S. dollars' worth in Ethereum whenever 1,000 Dai is borrowed in a Decentralized Finance (DeFi) smart contract.

After several fluctuations in earlier years, the price of Tether or USDT since 2020 achieved the stability against the U.S. dollar that it was designed to reach. In 2021, Tether ranks as one of the biggest cryptocurrencies in the world and is regarded as the most well-known "stablecoin", or cryptocurrency that is connected to the price development of another, real-world asset. As Tether's USDT code suggest, the token is, in this case, connected to the U.S. dollar. This effectively means that a single Tether will nearly always be worth one single U.S. dollar. This relative stability, unlike the price development of, say, Ripple (XRP), is what defines a stablecoin and is especially important for decentralized lending and borrowing. This particular segment made up roughly half of the overall value locked in Decentralized Finance or DeFi.

Based on 24 hour trading volume, stablecoin Bitcoin outpaced Ethereum and, more importantly, Tether in May 2025, accounting for most crypto trades. This is unusual as stablecoin Tether often tends to be most traded - due to its use in purchasing other cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin's leading role is underlined in a market cap league table of more than 100 cryptocurrencies — including ones for DeFi, NFT and stablecoins. Bitcoin and Ethereum are typically the only ones to reach over *** billion U.S. dollars, with Ethereum usually following by around one **** this amount. Does this mean that Bitcoin gets traded more than Ethereum? Not necessarily, as the daily transactions of Ethereum tend to be significantly higher than that of Bitcoin.

Although there are multiple stablecoins that use the USD as a collateral, two of these digital assets were much bigger than the others. The main names that spring to mind regarding stablecoins, Tether and USD Coin, are the main examples of collateralized stablecoins, or stablecoins that are entirely or near entirely backed up by a reserve asset. Stablecoins have often been associated with their close relation to "real-world" fiat currencies to achieve their price stability and assuring the digital asset's value, most notably the U.S. dollar. Tether and USD Coin ranked among the top cryptocurrencies in the world, for that reason. As of May 19, 2025, Tether has a market value of *******, while USD Coin's market value is ********. There are other assets, however, that can serve as the backing for a stablecoin.

Bitcoin dominance steadily declined in April 2024 to below ** percent, amid rumors of central banks halting or potentially lowering interest rates in the future. Within the crypto world, this so-called "dominance" ratio is one of the oldest and most investigated metrics available. It measures the coin's market cap relative to the overall crypto market — effectively showing how strong Bitcoin compared to all the other cryptocurrencies that are not BTC, called "altcoins". Why dominance matters is because market caps of any crypto can change relatively quickly, either due to sudden price changes or a change of recorded trading volume. Essentially, the figure somewhat resembles a trading sentiment, revealing whether Bitcoin investors are responding to certain events or whether Bitcoin is losing out on functions offered by, for example, stablecoins or NFT tokens. "Dominance" criticism: Ethereum and stablecoin The interpretation of the Bitcoin metric is not without its criticism. When first conceived, Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency to be created and had a substantial market share within all cryptocurrencies? The overall share of stablecoins, such as Tether, as well as Ethereum increasingly start to resemble that of Bitcoin, however. Some analysts argue against this comparison. For one, they point towards the large influence of trading activity between Bitcoin and Ethereum in the dominance metric. Second, they argue that stablecoins can be traded in for Bitcoin and Ethereum, essentially showing how much investors are willing to engage with "regular" cryptocurrency. A rally around Bitcoin in late 2023? By December 2023, the Bitcoin price reached roughly 41,000 U.S. dollars — the first time in 20 months such a value was reached. A weaker U.S. dollar, speculation on decreasing interest rates, and a potential Bitcoin ETF approval are believed to be at the heart of this price increase. Whether this will hold in 2024 is unclear: The monthly interest rate from the U.S. Fed is speculated to decrease in 2024, despite a vow of "higher for longer". In December 2023, the thought of decreasing interest rates and the potential of a Bitcoin ETF fuelled market sentiment towards riskier assets.