Tether vs. Circle: USDT is 'Ousting' USDC from the Solana Blockchain

Stablecoins are the sweetest, most lucrative business in all of crypto. No surprise the Clarity Act got stuck in Congress—it all came down to stablecoins.

Tether pulls in $12 billion in revenue and pockets $10 billion in profit every year. It's now among the top 18 holders of US government debt—country‑level. And the company already has its own person inside the White House. Yet out in the real market, corporations are increasingly choosing USDC. According to analysts at the crypto gateway Cryptomus, USDC transaction volume hit $2.55 trillion in Q1 2026, while USDT only managed $1.49 trillion. Circle's token now holds over 80% of regulated B2B settlements.

Sure, Tether's market cap is still more than double Circle's, but the corporate sector's potential is enormous. And USDC has already carved out a spot in the payment systems of nearly every public fintech giant—Stripe, Visa, Worldpay, you name it.

That's why the Drift protocol hack was a real April Fools' gift for Tether. The largest DEX on Solana got drained of $230 million—and North Korean hackers quietly walked away with it, all through USDC. Later, Circle tried to defend itself, saying it only blocks its stablecoins by court order. But as Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart put it: if you're running a centralized protocol, you freeze stolen funds. Period.

Tether is chipping in a large sum to help reimburse Drift traders—and it's not just throwing money away. USDC used to hold an 80% share on Solana. Now it's down to 55%. Though, weirdly enough, Circle's overall market cap started climbing right after April 1—after having been falling. Is North Korea going to surprise us with more hacks? Funny thing is, Tether's supply jumped 3% in just ten days.