Dai
DAI
Tether
USDT
Dai vs Tether
Last 7 days, both indexed to zero
Each line starts at zero seven days ago and shows the percentage move since, so the two are on the same scale regardless of what one coin costs. Seven days is a week, not a trend.
| DAI | USDT | |
|---|---|---|
| Price A higher price per coin is not a bigger asset — it is the same value cut into fewer pieces. | $0.9999 | $0.9992 |
| Market cap Price multiplied by circulating supply. The closest thing to "how big is this". | $4.57B | $183.06B (larger) |
| Rank by market cap | #21 | #3 (larger) |
| Change, 24h | 0.00% | 0.00% |
| Change, 7 days | 0.00% | 0.00% |
| 24h volume How much actually changed hands. Thin volume against a large market cap means the price is easier to move than the cap suggests. | $154.79M | $32.9B (larger) |
| Daily turnover Volume as a share of market cap — how much of the asset trades in a day. | 3.39% | 17.97% (larger) |
| Circulating supply | 4,573,110,437 DAI | 183,218,799,295 USDT (larger) |
| Supply cap A hard cap and an uncapped supply are different designs, not a better and a worse one — what matters is whether issuance is predictable. | No fixed cap | No fixed cap |
| Below all-time high How far each sits under its own record price. It says where the price has been, not where it is going. | ▼18.04% | ▼24.31% |
| All-time high | $1.22 Mar 2020 | $1.32 Jul 2018 |
A highlighted figure is simply the larger of the two. It is marked on size, liquidity and supply — where bigger is a fact — and deliberately not on price or on percentage change, where "bigger" would be us implying a winner.
What each one is
Dai
DAI is a dollar-pegged stablecoin created in 2017 by MakerDAO, and it works fundamentally differently from Tether or USDC. No company holds dollars in a bank for it. Instead, users lock crypto collateral into smart contracts and mint DAI against it, always depositing more value than they borrow.
Tether
Tether (USDT) is a stablecoin designed to hold a value of one US dollar. Launched in 2014, it is issued by Tether Limited, and it is consistently the most heavily traded asset in crypto — for many traders it functions as the dollar of the crypto market, particularly outside the United States.
Where each one lives
Dai
Issued as a token on Ethereum.
The same name exists on several chains. Sending to the wrong one is the most common way people lose money here — check the contract address on the DAI page.
Tether
Issued as a token on Aptos, Avalanche, Celo, Ethereum and 7 more.
The same name exists on several chains. Sending to the wrong one is the most common way people lose money here — check the contract address on the USDT page.
Whichever you hold, holding it yourself is the same problem
Both of these can sit on an exchange, and on an exchange neither of them is yours in the way people assume. If you decide to hold either one properly, this is the category that does it — devices that keep the keys off any internet-connected machine.
All hardware wallets we list → Some listings earn us a commission. That buys position on a list and nothing else — our rules, in writing.
We do not know your position, your timeframe or your tolerance for losing money, and any page that claims to answer this question without knowing those things is selling something. What we can do is make sure the facts above are current and that nothing on this page was paid for. Both of these assets can fall a long way.
Other comparisons
Figures for Dai and Tether synced 3m ago from CoinGecko and shown in USD. This page is market information and education, not financial advice, and nothing on it is a recommendation to buy or sell DAI or USDT. Both can lose value.