Stablecoins Q4 2023
New series of stablecoin quarterly analytics. In Q3 2024 stablecoin market capitalization rebound primarily driven by growth in Tether volume. Tether's reserves are audited by BDO.
The market capitalization of stablecoins at the end of Q4 2023 rebound. The growth of $6.8B with $8.6B increase in USDT capitalization slightly offset by $1.3B reduction in the capitalization of discontinued by Binance/Paxos BUSD.
Asset Reserves
During Q4 2023, we saw the increase of cash (by $1.3B) and cash equivalents (by $0.8B) backing USD coin.
Two other biggest stablecoin assets (Tether and Paxos) did not show significant changes in the structure of the underlying assets.
Who Are the Auditors?
In Q4 2023 we see continuing growth in the market share of stablecoins with reserves audited by BDO providing assurance over Tether reserves. In fact, BDO is responsible for 80% of the market capitalization of top-3 stablecoins (USDC, USDT, and USDP).
Nice piece and nice summary of the firms that provide assurance services. It looks like the landscape is evolving! It might be worth mentioning that the reports are not "audited", it's an attestation service which has a different scope and is performed under different standards than a full audit. Tether calls it an "assurance opinion" in its press release. https://tether.to/en/tethers-2023-q4-attestation/