Bitcoin Critic Peter Schiff Predicts USDT Will Eclipse BTC

Bitcoin dropped to around $61,500 in recent days, its weakest level in roughly four months, and Peter Schiff wasted no time connecting that slide to a broader argument he has been making about stablecoins.

A Stablecoin On The Move

Tether’s USDT has already climbed to a market capitalization of nearly $188 billion, according to data from DeFiLlama, closing the gap with Ethereum to just under $26 billion. Schiff, the economist and longtime Bitcoin critic, says the numbers point to an inevitable outcome.

“The market cap of Tether will soon surpass the market cap of Ethereum,” Schiff wrote on X. “It will eventually surpass the market cap of Bitcoin, too. The only question is how long it will take.”

USDT has become a dominant tool for moving money across crypto markets, and its reach now extends into payments, remittances, and digital dollar transfers — a trend he says supports his case.

USDT holds a one-dollar peg, setting it apart from Bitcoin and Ethereum, and that stability makes it the go-to choice for users who want to move money without taking on price risk.

Not His First Warning

Schiff has been sounding alarms about Bitcoin for years. His latest comments include a prediction that BTC could eventually fall below $20,000, which would represent a drop of roughly 80% from its October 2025 peak near $126,200.

He has also pointed to weakness in tech stocks as a pressure point for Bitcoin, noting that the crypto asset has relied on the broader tech rally for support.

Bitcoin recently suffered a sharp hourly decline of more than $2,000, briefly touching $61,460, as selling pressure spread across the market and triggered over $1 billion in leveraged liquidations.

Reports indicate Ethereum’s position as the second-largest crypto asset is now under pressure from a stablecoin rather than another blockchain competitor.

At current figures, USDT would need to grow by roughly 15% to pull ahead of Ethereum, while matching Bitcoin’s $1.28 trillion market cap would require a far larger expansion of nearly seven times its present size.

Schiff’s prediction has drawn attention not just for its boldness but for its timing, arriving as stablecoin adoption continues rising and crypto markets face renewed turbulence.

Whether the prediction holds up remains an open question, though the narrowing gap between USDT and Ethereum suggests the first part of his forecast may not be far off.

Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView