PANews reported on May 7th, citing CoinDesk, that Ben O'Neill, Head of Liquidity at Bridge, stated at the Consensus conference that the dominance of Tether and Circle in the stablecoin market is generally detrimental to the growth of the entire industry. He pointed out that while the design choices of these two issuers have their advantages and disadvantages, they are not suitable for all use cases. Tether has built a dollar shadow economy independent of the US financial system; while Circle's USDC follows a US-regulated path and is deeply involved in DeFi.

O'Neill analyzed the shortcomings of both companies from the perspective of large payment companies: Tether's 10-basis-point redemption fee is too expensive for payment companies, while Circle's continuous increase in burn fees has a net negative impact on companies like Visa that want to handle trillions of dollars in card settlements. He believes that in the coming years, more stablecoins need to be built and optimized for specific use cases, and the role of clearinghouses will rise to make the exchange between stablecoins as efficient as possible. He warned that more competition is needed, otherwise Tether and Circle will only keep raising fees and not sharing profits, making stablecoins less and less like money.