Tether's USDT, a stable-coin that aims to trade at $1, is becoming more and more popular among traders, research from Morgan Stanley finds, Business Insider reported.
"During the most recent bear market, USDT has been taking a larger share of trading volumes," the bank said after compiling data from over 350 exchanges.
It said since the beginning of 2018 trades between USDT and Bitcoin (TIKER: BTC.EXANTE) have become more common, and Bitcoin trades paired against USDT now make up 14% of Bitcoin trading volumes, up from less than 1% in October.
While Bitcoin has shed as much of 70% off its all-time high near $20,000 set in December since the beginning of 2018, Tether is seen as a stable-coin.
Still, the cryptocurrency is controversial, and skeptics have questioned whether Tether actually has the dollars it says back its crypto.
Two cryptocurrency exchanges, Binance and OKEx, added the cryptocurrency to their venues at the end of 2017.