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Head-to-head · Stablecoins

USDT (Tether) vs USDS (Sky) USDT (Tether) leads by 2 points.

USDT (Tether) scores 2 points above USDS (Sky), led by counterparty and insolvency rank and reserve and assurance scope. USDT (Tether) ranks #6 and USDS (Sky) #10 of 11 published stablecoins. Every term of the gap is on the ledger below; the inputs are on the audit receipt.

USDT (Tether)57
USDS (Sky)55
Scores are out of 100; published scores fall within 41–99 · ranks #6 and #10 of 11
Methodology v2026.10.18Ranking snapshot Evidence verified through 4 published criteria5 score dimensions Receipt #cc-VS-USDT-TETHER-VS-USDS-SKY-384c9599
Published verdictRanking snapshot 3 November 2026

USDT (Tether) leads by 2 points

USDT (Tether) scores 2 points above USDS (Sky), led by counterparty and insolvency rank and reserve and assurance scope.

USDT (Tether) #6 of 1157
USDS (Sky) #10 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; USDS (Sky) on 1. The terms sum to the gap.
TermUSDT (Tether)USDS (Sky)WeightPoints
Counterparty and insolvency rank2/101/107.2+1.9for USDT (Tether)+1.0 of 32
Redemption right exercised3/104/106.7−1.7for USDS (Sky)−0.9 of 32
Reserve and assurance scope2/101/105.8+1.5for USDT (Tether)+0.8 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.

  • A row-above bound on one row means the criterion arithmetic does not reproduce the displayed gap exactly.
Quick facts

At a glance

2 of 3 rows read the same for both.
FactUSDT (Tether)USDS (Sky)
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.”MINT/REDEEM FEES AND MINIMUMS ARE NOT IN ANY BINDING DOCUMENT. The Skybase International Terms of Use (https://docs.sky.money/legal/skybase-international/terms-of-use, "Version: 2.0 | Last Modified: 1 September 2026", fetched 29 September 2026) is the silent page: 0 occurrences of "redeem" or "redemption", and no fee schedule or minimum of any kind for acquiring or exiting USDS. The only published pricing sits in the protocol documentation and on-chain. Sky Protocol Docs, https://developers.sky.money/protocol/tokens/usds/ (redirects to developers.skyeco.com, fetched 29 September 2026), DAI USDS Converter: "Converts DAI to USDS at a fixed ratio of 1:1 and vice versa." / "No fees assessed." / "Fees cannot be enabled on this route in the future." Sky Protocol Docs, https://developers.sky.money/guides/psm/litepsm/ (fetched 29 September 2026): "The tin fee is assessed on all sellGem transactions, and the tout fee is assessed on all buyGem transactions. Both tin and tout values are set by Sky Ecosystem governance." and "All users, both public and authorized, can only swap up to the DAI and USDC balances held by LitePSM-DAI-USDC." CURRENT VALUES, all read at ONE Ethereum block, 26,082,220 (2026-09-29T09:26:59Z) via https://ethereum-rpc.publicnode.com: LitePSM-DAI-USDC 0xf6e72Db5454dd049d0788e411b06CfAF16853042 tin() = 0 and tout() = 0; LitePSMWrapper-USDS-USDC 0xA188EEC8F81263234dA3622A406892F3D630f98c tin() = 0 and tout() = 0. No minimum size is published or enforced on either route; the practical ceiling is module inventory — 4,133,680,653.128042 USDC in the Pocket 0x37305B1cD40574E4C5Ce33f8e8306Be057fD7341 at that block against a USDS totalSupply of 6,672,590,279.74 (label: on-chain reads, true only at the stamped block). Marketing counterpart on https://sky.money/ (fetched 29 September 2026), reworded since August: "Swap anytime. No fees, no slippage."
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 USDS (Sky)'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.

USDS (Sky)

55#10 of 11
Pick it when
Pick USDS (Sky) if redemption right exercised matters most — it scores 4/10 to USDT (Tether)'s 3/10 there (weight 28).
Strength
Seizure and upgrade authority — 5/10
Tradeoff
That nobody is on the other side. Sky's binding Terms of Use (Version 2.0, last modified 1 September 2026) contain zero occurrences of the words "redeem" or "redemption", and the same document states that Skybase International "is not a subsidiary, agent, or representative of the Sky Protocol" and that neither it nor its affiliates are "party to any transaction on the Sky Protocol" — so there is no entity a holder can present USDS to for a dollar, and no insolvency rank to hold. The par exit everyone actually uses is a swap into USDC through a governance-owned module, and Sky's own protocol documentation says "Governance can set either tin or tout to the value of type(uint256).max , halting sellGem and buyGem transactions respectively on the LitePSM. Transactions would be halted for both public and authorized users." while sky.money's homepage advertises "Swap anytime. No fees, no slippage." Worse than the fee switch: the DAI leg's converter is genuinely immutable, but it mints through UsdsJoin, whose mint call is auth-gated on the token, so a single deny() from the pause proxy severs that route too. A buyer who read only the homepage would learn none of this.
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 USDS (Sky) (weight 30)
  • Reserve and assurance scope: 2/10 against 1/10 for USDS (Sky) (weight 24)
USDS (Sky)

Choose USDS (Sky) if redemption right exercised matters most

  • Redemption right exercised: 4/10 against 3/10 for USDT (Tether) (weight 28)
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
USDS (Sky)1 out of 10

Redemption right exercised

by 1 of 10weight 6.7 of 86USDS (Sky) leads
USDT (Tether)3 out of 10
USDS (Sky)4 out of 10

Reserve and assurance scope

by 1 of 10weight 5.8 of 86USDT (Tether) leads
USDT (Tether)2 out of 10
USDS (Sky)1 out of 10

Seizure and upgrade authority

weight 4.3 of 86Tie
USDT (Tether)5 out of 10
USDS (Sky)5 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)14/20USDS (Sky)14/20
Tie
Published criteriaweight 30 of 86
USDT (Tether)6.8/30USDS (Sky)6.1/30
USDT (Tether) leads
Frictionweight 10 of 86 · constant here
USDT (Tether)2.7/10USDS (Sky)2.7/10
Tie
Trust recordweight 8 of 86 · constant here
USDT (Tether)3.2/8USDS (Sky)3.2/8
Tie
Measured dataweight 18 of 86 · constant here
USDT (Tether)8.3/18USDS (Sky)8.3/18
Tie
Decision rulePublished order

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

Pick USDS (Sky) if redemption right exercised matters most — it scores 4/10 to USDT (Tether)'s 3/10 there (weight 28).

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, USDS (Sky) 5/10)
  • 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, USDS (Sky) 1/10)
    Scored by What is really behind it, and what did the third party actually opine on? · 24% (USDT (Tether) 2/10, USDS (Sky) 1/10)
  • 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, USDS (Sky) 4/10)
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 USDS (Sky), led by counterparty and insolvency rank and reserve and assurance scope. Published scores, out of 100: USDT (Tether) 57 (rank 6 of 11 stablecoins), USDS (Sky) 55 (rank 10 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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