USDT, the world’s largest dollar-pegged stablecoin, is trading well above face value on Indian crypto platforms. While local reports attribute the premium to a recent enforcement action, exchanges explain it as a simple demand-supply dynamic.
The stablecoin’s premium rose to 7–10% above its dollar value on Indian platforms over the weekend. At one point, USDT traded around ₹102.88 against an official dollar-rupee rate of about 94.65 per USD. USDT’s market cap stood at $184.68 billion as of this writing, making it the world’s largest dollar-pegged stablecoin.
That gap, known as the USDT premium, normally runs between 3% and 4%. Put simply, it’s the extra rupees buyers pay for dollar exposure via USDT instead of through a bank. The premium widens whenever local demand outpaces the supply of tokens actually available to trade.
The spike followed action by India’s Enforcement Directorate related to USDT payments, the country’s financial-crime agency said, CoinDesk reported Monday.
Now, exchanges are responding to the premium spike, and their explanations line up closely with that supply-side account.
The market clears higher
Minal Thakur, CFO of the Mumbai-based CoinDCX, called the premium as a function of local order-book depth relative to the global dollar reference price.
“The INR price of USDT is set by local order-book depth and the global dollar reference. India has structurally been a net buyer of crypto, so local INR demand often runs ahead of available sell-side liquidity. When that liquidity is thinner near the global reference price, the market clears higher,” Thakur told CoinDesk.
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