By market capitalization and usage, Tether’s USDt is the biggest stablecoin in the world, with a value of about $141 billion.
The infrastructure for USDT0, Tether’s new cross-chain US dollar stablecoin, will be provided by Arbitrum.
Arbitrum One will act as the primary hub connecting USDt USDT$1.00 deployments on Ethereum, Tron, TON, and Celo to the recently established USDT0, per an announcement on February 11. In particular, Arbitrum’s Legacy Mesh technology will offer a native method for transferring USDt between these significant chains.
The Legacy Mesh technology offers consumers and developers “deep, liquid markets regardless of the blockchain” they’re using, according to Steven Goldfeder, CEO of Offchain Labs, a company that develops Arbitrum.
Goldfeder said the new approach would increase the stablecoin’s scalability across networks and encourage “broader USDt adoption.”
With a total market capitalization of over $141 billion, USDt is now the most popular stablecoin in the world, according to CoinMarketCap. With a total worth of $59 billion, Circle’s USD Coin, USDC$0.9999, comes in a distant second.
On January 16, Tether introduced USDT0 in partnership with LayerZero. The first use of the cross-chain stablecoin was on Kraken’s scaling solution, Ink, a cryptocurrency exchange.
Tether’s increasing earnings
Tether is still quite profitable, both in absolute numbers and on a per-employee basis, despite regulatory uncertainty surrounding USDt’s position in the EU and increasing competition from other stablecoin issuers.
The company’s enormous holding of US government bonds earning income allowed it to achieve a record-breaking profit of $13 billion in 2024.
Tether’s US Treasury holdings were valued at over $113 billion by the end of 2024. According to the company’s July statement, that is larger than all but 17 governments worldwide.
Stablecoins’ massive adoption in the cryptocurrency market and the technology’s potential to revolutionize conventional remittance services are the main factors contributing to the company’s success.
Cross-border payments and remittances are among the most revolutionary use cases for stablecoins, offering less expensive substitutes for well-known remittance services, according to a December Chainalysis analysis.
Chainalysis demonstrated that utilizing a stablecoin to send $200 from Sub-Saharan Africa is about 60% less expensive than conventional fiat-based techniques.
