Tether USDT

Tether USDT

Introduction

Cryptocurrencies are the most exciting technological advancement of the decade regarding our financial system. They offer many different ways to use our money and expand its use, but that comes with a few problems. Cryptocurrencies are still volatile assets that can react heavily to market movements. The other problem is that due to the same volatility, we still cannot altogether remove fiat cash from the use, since that would destroy price stability everywhere. People had to find a way to connect the use of cryptocurrencies with the stable value of fiat currency like the dollar. That is how the idea of Stablecoins came to be. Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies tied to the value of a fiat currency, such as the U.S. dollar or the Euro, and they allow for more price stability when using cryptocurrencies.

Tether USDT is a stablecoin issued by the Hong Kong company Tether Limited controlled by the owners of Bitfenex. Tether is a currency pegged to USD by having all of its tokens in circulation backed by a sum of commercial paper, fiduciary deposits, cash, reserve repo notes, and treasury bills reserve.

The purpose of USDT is to combine the unrestricted nature of cryptocurrencies, which can be sent between users cross-border without a trusted third-party intermediary, with the stable value of the U.S. dollar.

What is Unique About USDT?

Tether’s value is guaranteed to remain tethered to the U.S. dollar, making USDT unique. Tether claims to allocate the exact USD amount to its reserves whenever it distributes new USDT tokens, ensuring that USDT is fully backed by cash and cash equivalents. 

This property makes USDT a haven for crypto investors: they can place their portfolio value in Tether during periods of high volatility without cashing out into USD completely. Furthermore, USDT enables a simple means to exchange a U.S. dollar across the world via blockchain without relying on a slow and expensive intermediary like a bank.

Token Information

What Does USDT Mean and Where Can It Be Used?

The USDT stands for United States Dollar Tether, Tether being the company behind it. USDT use cases are:

  • Making fiat currencies more available to everyday crypto users.
  • Hedging against cryptocurrency volatile markets. Instead of selling your crypto when the market drops off, you keep your money locked in USDT, and later you can enter the market more quickly.
  • Enables businesses, exchanges, ATMs, and others to use fiat currency on the blockchain.
  • USDT can also be used to protect your investment during market drop-offs by putting into different yield earning, lending, and borrowing protocols to receive a yearly % on your tokens.

Price History

The price of USDT at the time of writing (June 5th, 2022) is $1, with a market cap of $112.3B. It is ranked #3 on the cryptocurrency by market cap list. It also has a 24h trading volume of $72.1B, showing us the great demand it has.

It is worth noting that the price of USDT can always go a few cents up or down due to the peg with USD. This mainly happens when there are significant market fluctuations regarding the USD.

Tokenomics

USDT does not have a cap on the number of tokens. Since a private company issues it, they decide how many of the tokens are in circulation. USDT in circulation corresponds to the USD sum stored in their treasury in commercial paper, fiduciary deposits, cash, reserve repo notes, and treasury bills reserve.

Where to Buy USDT?

The demand for cryptocurrency’s most popular stablecoin, USDT, is constantly growing.

It is available for purchase in many ways, with essentially infinite supply since new tokens are created only when users want to exchange their USD for USDT.

The primary way people buy their USDT is through centralized exchanges because they offer the ability to purchase them with credit\debit cards, which most people prefer.

Although significantly more complicated, the second way is through decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap. Decentralized exchanges usually require users to already have some cryptocurrencies in their wallets to buy other cryptos.

Finally, it can be purchased easily through a broker app such as our Veli App, where you can get your hands on some USDT in just a few taps on the screen.

The Team

USDT was formed in 2014 by Brock Pierce, Reeve Collins, and Craig Sellars.

  • Brock Pierce is a well-known businessman who has worked on several high-profile cryptocurrency and entertainment projects.
  • Reeve Collins was the CEO of Tether for the first two years of its existence. He’d previously co-founded several successful companies.
  • In addition to working on Tether, Craig Sellars has been a member of the Omni Foundation for over six years. Sellars has also worked for many other cryptocurrency companies and organizations.

Availability

In addition to being available on Ethereum, USDT is also available on the Bitcoin, EOS, Tron, Algorand, Solana, Avalanche, Bitcoin Cash (SLP), and OMG blockchains.

The Backers

USDT has not had any major early investors or backers to start the project, apart from its parent company Bitfinex.

Legal Activity

USDT has had its fair share of lawsuits, legal battles, and accusations.

Alleged Price Manipulation

For over five years, Tether allegedly issued unbacked USDT tokens. Bitfinex would later purchase Bitcoin on the open market to increase its price during market plunges.

According to the complaints, this caused the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies to skyrocket to $795 billion in late 2017.

Lawsuit

Bitfinex was under investigation by the New York Attorney General, Letitia James, in 2019. Tether gained notoriety as a result of the exchange’s association with it. The case centered on alleged cover-ups totaling $850 million for a loss. Tether’s lawyer revealed that the cryptocurrency was only 74% backed around this time.

Tether was able to reach an agreement with the state of New York. Under the settlement agreement terms, Tether was forbidden from conducting business in New York. Although Bitfinex and Tether did not confess wrongdoing, they were fined $18.5 million by the court.

The court also asked Tether to provide quarterly reserve reports for the next two years. There have since been more major and minor lawsuits regarding Tether and Bitfinex.

Network Activity

USDT is the most popular stablecoin on the market, and the growth is not slowing down. Here are some numbers to better illustrate that.

  • The number of active users is 97.7K
  • The number of transfers per second is 1.96
  • The number of total daily transfers is 169.9K
  • The number of unique wallets created by users is 38.55M
  • The number of tokens in circulating supply is in constant growth, telling us the demand is rising

 

Competition

USDT’s biggest competitors are USDC and DAI. USDC is the second biggest stablecoin by market cap, followed by DAI in third.

USDC is a stablecoin created by Circle and Coinbase Exchange. It started gaining popularity when USDT’s legal issues surfaced in public. It is still significantly smaller than USDT, but it is gaining popularity fast.

DAI is the world’s first decentralized algorithmic stablecoin created by MakerDAO. It was the first stablecoin to be issued and controlled by Smart Contracts. It is also the first stablecoin backed by a crypto collateral deposit.

Here are some numbers to further illustrate the competition.


Tether

USD Coin

DAI

Market Cap

$112.3b

$32.3b

$5.34b

24 Volume

$72.3b

$6.6b

$319m

Total Number of Wallet Addresses

38.5m

13.9m

2.3m

Total Number of Daily Active Users

80.5k

26.1k

2.1k

Total Number of New Addresses Created Daily

18.2k

7.7k

400

Launch Date

2014

2018

2019

Issued by

Tether

Centre Consortium (Circle and Coinbase exchange)

Maker Protocol and the MakerDAO

Potential Risks

As with any other asset class, there are risks involved when it comes to investing. Since there are many kinds of cryptocurrencies, risks can be grouped into two categories – general risks that apply when investing in cryptocurrencies and risks that only apply to specific assets. 

We have prepared a guide that addresses general cryptocurrency investing risks and offers tips on how to mitigate them, while risks that only apply to specific assets are addressed directly in the coin guides such as this one.

USDT Investing Risks

  • Tether is a centralized cryptocurrency operated by one team. This means that if something happens to the parent company, it can affect the whole supply of USDT.
  • Lack of transparency is another issue. Tether has not been fully transparent about the backing of the USDT and its token creation and audit processes in the past, Although in the past few years, Tether has made transparent monthly reports about its reserves, everything appears to be fine.
  • Unclear banking and regulatory status. Throughout its existence, Tether Limited has jumped from one banking partner and regulatory jurisdiction to another, raising concerns over the project’s legitimacy and legal standing.

 

Useful Links

Conclusion

As the largest stablecoin, USDT is the most popular stablecoin for trading.

It is so frequently utilized that many times it trades more than its whole market capitalization in a single day, indicating that it is a focused trade currency. USDT is the most used and widely accepted stablecoin.

USDT remains the number one stablecoin by market capitalization, increasing its demand. USDT is excellent for sending and exchanging funds cross-border, and if you want to stay in the crypto loop, you can hold your money in USDT tokens.