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Head-to-head · Stablecoins

USDT (Tether) vs USDe USDT (Tether) leads by 2 points.

USDT (Tether) scores 2 points above USDe, led by counterparty and insolvency rank and redemption right exercised. USDT (Tether) ranks #6 and USDe #9 of 11 published stablecoins. Every term of the gap is on the ledger below; the inputs are on the audit receipt.

USDT (Tether)57
USDe55
Scores are out of 100; published scores fall within 41–99 · ranks #6 and #9 of 11
Methodology v2026.10.18Ranking snapshot Evidence verified through 4 published criteria5 score dimensions Receipt #cc-VS-USDT-TETHER-VS-USDE-74cadd96
Published verdictRanking snapshot 3 November 2026

USDT (Tether) leads by 2 points

USDT (Tether) scores 2 points above USDe, led by counterparty and insolvency rank and redemption right exercised.

USDT (Tether) #6 of 1157
USDe #9 of 1155
Scores are out of 100; published scores fall within 41–99; a bar is empty at 41 and full at 99.
Why, term by termUSDT (Tether) leads on 2 of 4 published criteria; USDe on 2. The terms sum to the gap.
TermUSDT (Tether)USDeWeightPoints
Counterparty and insolvency rank2/101/107.2+1.9for USDT (Tether)+1.0 of 32
Redemption right exercised3/101/106.7+3.5for USDT (Tether)+1.8 of 32
Reserve and assurance scope2/103/105.8−1.5for USDe−0.8 of 32
Seizure and upgrade authority5/107/104.3−2.2for USDe−1.2 of 32
Net of the terms+1.6
Criteria roundingThe criteria block is rounded to whole points before it is spread+0.2
Reproduced gap+1.8
Published gapAfter score rounding and bounds — see the note below5755+2.0

Weight is in points of the 86-point weighted total. Points are score points of the gap between the two.

Quick facts

At a glance

2 of 3 rows read the same for both.
FactUSDT (Tether)USDe
PricingSnapshothttps://tether.to/en/fees (HTTP 200 after redirect to /en/fees/, fetched 29 September 2026) publishes exactly four rows: “Minimum Tether Token acquisition or redemption amount” — “100,000 USD”; “Fee per redemption” — “The greater of $1,000 or 0.1%”; “Fee per acquisition” — “0.1%”; “Verification fee” — “150 USD in Tether Tokens”. On the verification fee, quoted continuously: “This amount is non-refundable but can be part of your redemption. The verification fee is intended to ensure that only those who are serious about establishing an account apply. The fee also helps offset a portion of the incurred costs from the execution of a robust verification process. Tether maintains the sole discretion to approve or not approve accounts. By submitting a verification request you agree that the 150 USD₮ deposit is non-refundable.” Also: “Tether does not offer wallet functionality for any digital tokens. Withdrawal requests for digital tokens held by Tether are evaluated per request and can take several days to process.” WORKED EXAMPLE (label: derived arithmetic, not a quote): the redemption floor equals 10 basis points only at one million US dollars, so at the published minimum of one hundred thousand it is 1.0 per cent; a minimum-size round trip costs 100 + 1,000 + 150 = 1,250 US dollars on 100,000, i.e. 1.25 per cent. The 30 June 2026 Reserves Report (BDO Advisory Services S.r.l., signed “Milan, 31 July 2026”, still the newest on 29 September 2026) books the fee into the liability: “As per its definition, contractual redemption value of the token takes into consideration the redemption fee of 10 basis points.”ISSUER FEES: NIL, STATED. USDe Terms and Conditions (https://docs.ethena.fi/resources/usde-terms-and-conditions.md, "Last Updated: August 2025", fetched 29 September 2026), section 12 "Fees; Authorization": "Except as disclosed to you prior to completing a transaction as a Mint User, Ethena BVI will not charge you any fees for tokenizing assets for USDe, or receiving USDe. Any cost of executing a mint or redemption transaction is a cost reimbursement to cover friction such as blockchain gas fees or execution fees paid by Ethena BVI." USDe Mint User Agreement (https://docs.ethena.fi/resources/usde-mint-user-agreement.md, "Last Updated: August 2025", fetched 29 September 2026), section 9 "Fees": "The Company may charge fees in connection with the Services, which will typically not represent fees for the Company’s own account and will constitute reimbursements for costs associated with transactions initiated by you, such as blockchain gas fees and execution fees." and "The applicable Digital Currency network may charge a fee in connection with blockchain transactions. You are responsible for all such fees." MINIMUMS: THE PAGES ARE SILENT. Neither binding document publishes a mint or redemption minimum; re-searched 29 September 2026, "minimum" still appears exactly once in each document, in both cases as severability boilerplate. What replaces a published minimum is a published discretion, Mint User Agreement section 12 "Transaction Limits": "The Company reserves the right to change the mint, redemption, transfer, and velocity limits as we deem necessary." and "We may establish individual or aggregate transaction limits on the size or number of mints, redemptions, transfers or other transactions that you initiate using your status as a Mint User during any specified time period." Unlike Tether, which publishes a 100,000 USD floor and a redemption fee a reader can price, Ethena publishes no number at all — access is gated by whitelisting, not by a posted ticket size. CONVERSION RATE ON THE WAY IN, Terms section 13 "Currency Conversion": "All tokenizations of assets will be credited in USDe to your whitelisted wallet(s) based on a rate of one (1) USDe per 1 USD ($1) of notional value", with that value set as follows: "Such value shall be calculated by Ethena BVI based on the asset in its sole discretion". NOTE FOR THE CARD: a zero issuer fee is not a cheap product here — it is a fee schedule for a counterparty class the retail reader cannot join (Terms section 2: "If you are a Holding User, you do not have a right to redeem USDe with Ethena BVI."). The retail cost of entry and exit is the market spread, which this spec grades at zero.
Asset coverageEditorial——
Region fitSnapshotglobalglobal
From the published criteria

Which should you pick?

USDT (Tether)

57#6 of 11
Leads
Pick it when
Pick USDT (Tether) if counterparty and insolvency rank matters most — it scores 2/10 to USDe's 1/10 there (weight 30).
Strength
Seizure and upgrade authority — 5/10
Tradeoff
That there is no such thing as "your" dollar at Tether — and, for almost everyone reading this, no such thing as your redemption right either. The buyer's mental model is a segregated dollar held for them, redeemable on demand. The binding terms say the opposite twice over. Balances are "not segregated assets held in your name or for your benefit but reflected only in the books and records of Tether"; the reserve is defined as every asset the company owns rather than a ring-fence carved out for holders; the claim is booked as an IFRS 9 "refund liability", an unsecured payable. And the exit is not a property of the token: "The right to purchase Tether Tokens or have Tether Tokens redeemed is a contractual right personal to you" — unlike USDC's terms, which assign the right onward to "any subsequent Holder", Tether's right belongs to the verified customer who contracted for it and does not travel with the coin you bought on an exchange. Four things compound it. (1) Even for that customer the exit is gated: 100,000 USD minimum to redeem and a fee of "The greater of $1,000 or 0.1%", which is 1.0% at that minimum, not the advertised 0.1%. (2) A quarter of the reserve — US$47.1bn of gold, bitcoin, equities, corporate bonds, an unnamed US$13.45bn secured-loan book and a US$5.24bn "Other Investments" bucket defined only as whatever fits no other row — sits behind an equity buffer of US$4.11bn that just shrank 35% on a US$3.17bn half-year loss, with no custodian named anywhere and an unprovisioned New York class action disclosed on the same page. (3) The contract is construed as a British Virgin Islands contract even though the issuer redomiciled to El Salvador, so the register entry and the governing law point at different jurisdictions. (4) If you are a US Person you are contractually prohibited from holding it at all. The deepest market in crypto is not the same thing as a claim you can enforce.

USDe

55#9 of 11
Pick it when
Pick USDe if reserve and assurance scope matters most — it scores 3/10 to USDT (Tether)'s 2/10 there (weight 24).
Strength
Seizure and upgrade authority — 7/10
Tradeoff
That you are not the customer. USDe Terms and Conditions, opening paragraph (https://docs.ethena.fi/resources/usde-terms-and-conditions.md, read 2026-08-19 (verification pass)): "For the avoidance of doubt, Holding Users are not customers of Ethena BVI." and section 2: "If you are a Holding User, you do not have a right to redeem USDe with Ethena BVI." Unless you are KYC-whitelisted as a Mint User — a status Ethena's docs describe as "subject to clearing KYC/KYB checks exclusively for approved market making counterparties" (https://docs.ethena.fi/overview/ethena-overview, read 2026-08-19 (verification pass)), and which US residents are barred from by Mint User Agreement section 1 ("Users in the United States are not eligible to become a Mint User.") — your only exit is selling to someone else at whatever the market pays. Compounding it, the redemption a Mint User does get is in kind and pro rata, "Ethena BVI (or an affiliate designated by Ethena BVI) commits to redeem 1 USDe for the notional value relating to its pro rata portion of the USDe Reserves in supported digital assets, up to a maximum amount of 1 USD in notional value, subject to these Terms, applicable law, and any fees where applicable." — a cap, not a floor — and section 11 confirms the reserves "Ethena BVI does not guarantee that the value of one (1) USDe will always or ever equal 1 USD ($1) on any platform. Due to a variety of factors, the value of USDe on third-party platforms such as cryptocurrency exchange platforms could fluctuate above or below 1 USD ($1), and the risk factors highlighted at docs.ethena.fi (as well as presently unknown risk factors) may result in the USDe Reserves falling to less than 1 USD ($1) of notional value per USDe in circulation." None of this is reachable from the product site: as served on 2026-08-19, https://ethena.fi/ contains the word "terms" nowhere in its delivered payload, while its footer strings "Careers" and "Brand Kit" do appear, proving the footer ships and the contract link does not.
Self-identify in 10 seconds

Which one is actually for you?

USDT (Tether)Leads

Choose USDT (Tether) if counterparty and insolvency rank matters most

  • Counterparty and insolvency rank: 2/10 against 1/10 for USDe (weight 30)
  • Redemption right exercised: 3/10 against 1/10 for USDe (weight 28)
USDe

Choose USDe if reserve and assurance scope matters most

  • Reserve and assurance scope: 3/10 against 2/10 for USDT (Tether) (weight 24)
  • Seizure and upgrade authority: 7/10 against 5/10 for USDT (Tether) (weight 18)
Criterion by criterion

Scorecard

Published criteria · weight in points of 868 of 8 cells scored. Strength is read from the evidence file; the weight is the published one. Methodology

Counterparty and insolvency rank

by 1 of 10weight 7.2 of 86USDT (Tether) leads
USDT (Tether)2 out of 10
USDe1 out of 10

Redemption right exercised

by 2 of 10weight 6.7 of 86USDT (Tether) leads
USDT (Tether)3 out of 10
USDe1 out of 10

Reserve and assurance scope

by 1 of 10weight 5.8 of 86USDe leads
USDT (Tether)2 out of 10
USDe3 out of 10

Seizure and upgrade authority

by 2 of 10weight 4.3 of 86USDe leads
USDT (Tether)5 out of 10
USDe7 out of 10

Score dimensions

weights sum to 86

The published score is five dimensions, each weighted for the category. "Published criteria" is the criteria block above; the other four are the engine's own terms — availability, friction, trust record, measured data. Each bar is one side's points out of that dimension's maximum; the weight beside the name is its points of the 86-point weighted total. The published criteria above can fill 24 of the block’s 30. A weight marked “constant here” belongs to a dimension every ranked product in the category holds at the same value: it still counts in the total, and it orders nothing here.

Availabilityweight 20 of 86 · constant here
USDT (Tether)14/20USDe14/20
Tie
Published criteriaweight 30 of 86
USDT (Tether)6.8/30USDe6.1/30
USDT (Tether) leads
Frictionweight 10 of 86 · constant here
USDT (Tether)2.7/10USDe2.7/10
Tie
Trust recordweight 8 of 86 · constant here
USDT (Tether)3.2/8USDe3.2/8
Tie
Measured dataweight 18 of 86 · constant here
USDT (Tether)8.3/18USDe8.3/18
Tie
Decision rulePublished order

Choose USDT (Tether) unless the term USDe leads on is the one you are buying.

Pick USDe if reserve and assurance scope matters most — it scores 3/10 to USDT (Tether)'s 2/10 there (weight 24).

The published order weighs every criterion the same way for everyone. To weigh them your way, run .

From the published order

Next best action

If this isn't your case

Other matchups worth comparing

How you can lose money here, and what the ranking scores
  • Control failure: a key or vote changes the rules, freezes or mints.
    Scored by Who can freeze, burn or replace your balance — and have they? · 18% (USDT (Tether) 5/10, USDe 7/10)
  • Insolvency failure: the firm or issuer that owes you cannot pay.
    Scored by Who exactly owes you the dollar, and where do you rank when they fail? · 30% (USDT (Tether) 2/10, USDe 1/10)
    Scored by What is really behind it, and what did the third party actually opine on? · 24% (USDT (Tether) 2/10, USDe 3/10)
  • Exit failure: you cannot get out at par, on time, or with what is yours.
    Scored by Can the person actually holding it get a dollar back at par — and has anyone, at size? · 28% (USDT (Tether) 3/10, USDe 1/10)
Not assessed by this ranking: Contract failure, Custody failure, Regulatory failure, Information failure. A high place says nothing about these; the Methodology tab says what each means.
Questions

Frequently asked questions

USDT (Tether) scores 2 points above USDe, led by counterparty and insolvency rank and redemption right exercised. Published scores, out of 100: USDT (Tether) 57 (rank 6 of 11 stablecoins), USDe 55 (rank 9 of 11).

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Written and reviewed by Founder
Reviewed Next review by Methodology v2026.10.18
How this page is reviewed

Reviewed means both products compared here was read against its sources on or after that date; every ranked category is re-read at least every 45 days. Models research, extract and parse. A deterministic engine ranks. Every quote passes an adversarial refute pass.

Accountable for this review: Mathias Siemonsmeier, Founder.

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