What are the best stablecoins?

Here's a comparative overview of the major stablecoins. I'll separate verified live numbers from what's general background knowledge, since data on the smaller ones didn't come back from the lookup this turn.

The two giants (verified)

Tether (USDT) — the largest by far.

• Price $0.9997, market cap ~$183.3B (rank #3 globally), 24h volume ~$50.7B.
• Backed by a mix of reserves including US Treasuries, cash, and commercial paper. Highest liquidity and the default quote pair on most exchanges, but has drawn recurring scrutiny over reserve transparency and is the most centralization/concentration-heavy of the big ones.

USD Coin (USDC) — the "institutional favorite."

• Issued by Circle, fully backed by cash and short-dated US Treasuries, and the only major USD stablecoin with monthly audited reserve attestations — the cleanest reserve-disclosure record of the three.
• Native to Ethereum but lives across many chains, and dominates regulated/on-chain-US-dollar use cases. Price also ~$1.00.

The rest (general background, not live-verified)

• DAI (MakerDAO) — decentralized, overcollateralized by crypto collateral instead of a central issuer's reserves. You don't trust a company, you trust the collateral ratio — but that makes it the one that can theoretically depeg under a sharp collateral sell-off, and it's not a pure $1 asset the way USDT/USDC are.
• USDe (Ethena) — a "synthetic dollar" that earns yield by delta-hedging (shorting perps against the collateral). Offers one of the higher native yields among stablecoins, but that yield is tied to funding rates — carry risk, so the yield isn't guaranteed.
• FRAX (Frax) — a fractional-algorithmic model that mixes collateral with an algorithm; historically yields better returns but carries more design complexity and smaller liquidity than the majors.

How to weigh them

No single "best" — it's a trade-off: USDC if you weight transparency and regulatory posture, USDT if you weight liquidity and where it's accepted, DAI if you want decentralization, USDe/FRAX if you're chasing yield and accept the added mechanics. These all target ~$1.00, so price isn't the differentiator — the backing, disclosure, and yield structure are.

I wasn't able to pull live data for DAI, USDe, and FRAX this turn — the numbers above for those are general knowledge, not current quotes. If you want, I can run full current snapshots on any one of them (price, market cap, TVL, news) so you're working with fresh figures.

Also tracked: Tetherusdt#3, USD CoinVertibleusdcv#1061.