The objective of fiat-pegged cryptocurrencies, called stablecoins, is to deliver the goodness of digital currency but without the concerning crypto volatility like in Bitcoin. That is, if all goes well, stablecoins should provide stable cryptocurrencies that are user-friendly for commercial transactions. While past studies have made some progress in assessing the success of stablecoins, their shortcoming is the failure to consider the economic realities of market turbulence. This paper closes the knowledge gap and adds to the literature by evaluating stablecoins’ performance based on empirical interrogation in times of financial market calmness and economic calamities. The study employs the Exponential General Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedastic (EGARCH) model and Tether’s daily price data from January 2017 to January 2025. The results show that the fiat-pegged cryptocurrency, proxied with stablecoins’ market leader (Tether), fails the test of currency stability, but not without some mitigations. The study findings should enable policymakers or consumers to make informed decisions with improved currency transparency for better risk management.