USDC vs. USDT: Which stablecoin do institutional traders prefer?

The data below indicates which of USD Coin (USDC) or Tether (USDT) is preferred by institutional stablecoin investors.

The average transaction size of USDC is larger than that of USDT

In a new post on X, market intelligence platform IntoTheBlock discusses how metrics related to the industry’s two largest stablecoins compare to each other.

Here's the stats shared by IntoTheBlock:

Comparison of different indicators related to USDC and USDT | Source: IntoTheBlock on X

The first indicator compared here is the total number of addresses, and USDT wins out, because stablecoins have 4.1 million addresses, while USDC has only 1.7 million, less than half of USDT.

Judging by active addresses, the former outperforms the latter. The "active address" here refers to the total number of addresses participating in transaction activities on the chain.

Active addresses can be considered similar to the unique number of stablecoin users, so Tether receives almost four times as much traffic as USD Coin.

With more active users, the total number of transactions involving USDT is also higher. However, the situation changes when looking at trading volume. This is the total amount of tokens transferred by these transfers.

USDC’s transaction volume appears to be 5.67 billion, while USDT’s is 4.5 billion. Interestingly, even though Tether’s total daily transactions are about three times that of USD Coin transfers, the latter’s transaction volume is still significantly higher.

There is only one conclusion here: the average transaction size of USDC is higher than that of USDT. In fact, the former transfers around $140,000 worth of tokens on average, as reflected in the average transaction size metric. In comparison, the latter traded at just $42,500.

The average USDC wallet balance is also higher than USDT. “These differences show that USDC is the stablecoin of choice for large traders and institutional entities, while USDT is favored by retail users,” IntoTheBlock explained.

The table also compares the average daily deviation of these stablecoin prices, and the price fluctuations of these two stablecoins are generally relatively smooth, because their deviation is still small.

While USD Coin may have a high concentration of large investors, there is the simple fact that Tether is the more popular stablecoin overall, which is reflected in its market capitalization.

USDT is a few positions higher than USDC | Source: CoinMarketCap

USDT is currently the third-largest cryptocurrency in the space, behind Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). USDC, on the other hand, ranks sixth on the market capitalization leaderboard, behind BNB (BNB) and XRP (XRP), which are fourth and fifth respectively.

Bitcoin price

As of this writing, Bitcoin is trading at around $29,900, up 2% over the last week.

BTC appears to be struggling to break the $30,000 mark | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView