Ruská centrální banka navrhla povolit na regulovaných burzách obchodování s Bitcoinem, Etherem a Tetherovým USDT. Návrh navazuje na nový zákon podepsaný Vladimirem Putinem.
Russia proposes exchange trading of Bitcoin, Ether and Tether’s USDTLatest NewsPublishedAug 11, 2026
Russia’s central bank proposed allowing Bitcoin, Ether and USDT to trade on regulated exchanges, following a law signed by President Vladimir Putin last week.
Russia’s central bank has compiled a proposed list of crypto assets that could be admitted to public trading on exchanges under new rules approved last week.
The list includes Bitcoin, Ether and Tether’s stablecoin USDT, the Bank of Russia said Tuesday, adding that the assets meet criteria including market capitalization, average daily trading volume and at least five years of price history on overseas markets.
The proposal follows a new law, signed by President Vladimir Putin on Aug. 4, that gives the Bank of Russia authority to determine which digital currencies can be admitted to organized trading and set related rules.
Under the rules, non-qualified investors could buy up to 300,000 Russian rubles ($3,650) worth of cryptocurrency per year through each intermediary, including a broker, crypto exchange service or asset manager. Qualified investors would face no purchase limits for crypto assets traded on exchanges or over-the-counter markets.
“Before making transactions, all investors, regardless of their status, will have to pass a test and familiarize themselves with the risks of investing in crypto assets,” the Bank of Russia said.
The central bank said the restrictions are designed to protect non-qualified investors from sharp and unpredictable fluctuations in crypto prices. The regulator is accepting comments on the proposal until Aug. 24.
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
Nabídka USDT klesla za posledních 60 dní asi o 4 miliardy USD, což podle dat CryptoQuant ukazuje na odchod kapitálu z krypta. Jen za posledních 11 dní spadla o dalších 870 milionů USD.
The cryptocurrency market is bleeding liquidity at a pace not seen in over a year. Data from CryptoQuant, covered by WuBlockchain, shows that Tether’s USDT supply has contracted by approximately $4 billion over the past 60 days. The decline accelerated sharply in the last 11 days, with an $870 million drop alone. That’s not just a rotation; it’s an outright reduction in the amount of dollar-pegged capital sitting on exchanges and DeFi platforms.
Analyst Stacy Muur interpreted the outflows as a signal that some investors are cashing out of crypto entirely, converting stablecoins back to fiat rather than holding them for re-entry. While profit-taking is a standard part of any cycle, the magnitude and speed of this exodus suggest broader fatigue. Stablecoin yields might be contributing too. With real-world asset yields rising and on-chain opportunities compressing, the opportunity cost of keeping dry powder in crypto has increased. The tokenized Treasury market recently surpassed $20 billion, indicating that yield-seeking capital has alternative destinations without leaving blockchain rails entirely.
Liquidity contraction and market implications This decline in USDT supply is not just an abstract metric. Stablecoins function as the lifeblood of crypto markets, providing the quote currency for the vast majority of spot and derivatives trading pairs. A $4 billion reduction in outstanding supply means less purchasing power available to absorb sell pressure. Historically, falling stablecoin balances on exchanges have correlated with declining asset prices and lower trading volumes. The current environment already shows thinning order books across major venues. If the trend continues, even positive catalysts may struggle to translate into sustained upward moves.
The yield environment is a crucial backdrop. Stablecoin users who don’t deploy capital into lending protocols earn nothing on their holdings. With the Federal Reserve keeping rates high, the lost yield on idle USDT is costly. The explosive growth in tokenized real-world assets proves that capital can earn a Treasury-adjacent return entirely on-chain. That shift may be cannibalizing traditional stablecoin demand, as investors treat stablecoins less as a parking spot and more as a temporary settlement layer before moving into yield-bearing instruments.
The specific timing is notable. Mid-July through early August has been marked by sideways price action in bitcoin and ether, along with a prolonged period of negative sentiment. Into that weakness, investors are choosing to exit rather than rotate into perceived safe havens like bitcoin. The speed of the outflows—$870 million in under two weeks—indicates that the decision to leave is not confined to small retail traders. That kind of volume suggests institutional or high-net-worth players are moving funds.
Regulatory headwinds and institutional caution The outflows coincide with a fraught moment for US crypto regulation. A landmark crypto bill faces fierce opposition from banking interests days before a Senate vote. That uncertainty can push risk-averse capital to the sidelines. Tether itself has navigated a series of regulatory and transparency challenges over the past year, and while no new enforcement action is behind this supply drop, the lingering perception of stablecoin risk could accelerate a flight to quality that bypasses crypto altogether.
Meanwhile, the broader institutional landscape is not uniformly bearish. Institutional staking and fintech integrations continue to drive demand for specific Layer-1 tokens. That divergence—where capital exits stablecoins but chases select altcoins—complicates the narrative of a wholesale crypto exit. It points instead to a market that’s becoming more differentiated between conviction sectors and everything else.
What remains unresolved There’s no clear data on whether the USDT supply drop reflects redemptions at Tether’s corporate level or simply a reduction in exchange-held balances. The two have very different implications. Direct redemptions would shrink the overall Tether market cap, indicating Treasury bill-backed dollars were removed from the system. A decline in exchange holdings, on the other hand, could simply mean USDT migrated to self-custody or DeFi protocols where it’s less visible in exchange metrics. That nuance matters when judging the true level of exit. The data so far cannot distinguish between these scenarios.
What is certain is that the market is less liquid than it was in early June. If a sudden spike in volatility hits, the thinner stablecoin cushion could amplify price swings in either direction. Crypto’s structural dependence on a handful of stablecoin issuers means these supply contractions deserve close monitoring. A prolonged or accelerating decline would be one of the most reliable signals that capital is meaningfully leaving the asset class, not just rotating within it.
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With over five years of experience in crypto, blockchain, and tech content, Ishtiyaq makes complex topics easy to understand. He simplifies blockchain and digital currency concepts for a wide audience, ensuring that beginners and experts alike can grasp key ideas. His clear and engaging writing helps readers stay informed about the latest trends, developments, and innovations in the crypto space. Whether explaining blockchain technology, digital assets, or DeFi, Ishtiyaq breaks down complicated ideas into simple, digestible content. His goal is to help people navigate the fast-changing world of cryptocurrency with confidence, clarity, and a deeper understanding.
Tether emitoval dalších 1 mld. USDT a poslal je do trezorové peněženky, čímž se celková nabídka blíží 189 mld. tokenů. Obíhající nabídka je zhruba 183 mld.
Tether printed another billion USDT on August 10, sending it straight to the Tether Treasury wallet. The transaction, logged on-chain and flagged by Whale Alert, represents the kind of nine-zero mint event that has become almost routine for the world’s largest stablecoin issuer.
With USDT’s total supply now approaching 189 billion tokens and circulating supply sitting at approximately 183 billion, this latest batch reinforces a pattern that has defined Tether’s operations throughout 2025 and 2026: mint big, mint often, and keep the shelves stocked before demand arrives.
What a treasury mint actually means When Tether mints USDT to its treasury, those tokens are “authorized but unissued.” The tokens sit idle until a verified customer deposits an equivalent amount of fiat, at which point Tether releases the corresponding USDT into circulation.
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This is why the gap between total supply (roughly 189 billion) and circulating supply (roughly 183 billion) exists. That approximately 6 billion difference represents inventory, tokens minted but not yet distributed to end users. The latest billion-dollar batch simply adds to that buffer.
The frequency tells a story Throughout 2025 and into 2026, Tether has executed multiple large-scale issuances, typically in $1 billion increments. When Tether is regularly topping off its treasury, it typically means the company is seeing, or expects to see, sustained institutional demand for dollar-denominated stablecoin liquidity.
Q2 2026 attestation data backs this up. Tether reported approximately $184.6 billion in USDT issued and $1.5 billion in net operating profit for the quarter, generated primarily through the yield on its reserve assets, including US Treasury bills.
Tether’s dominance in context Recent attestations have highlighted over $4 billion in excess reserves, meaning Tether holds more in assets than it has USDT in circulation.
What this means for the broader market Traders and investors monitoring on-chain flows will want to track how quickly this latest billion moves from the treasury into active circulation. A fast drawdown would suggest strong immediate demand. A slow one would indicate Tether is simply padding its buffer for a rainy day.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Cover image via depositphotos.com Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by our writers are their own and do not represent the views of U.Today. The financial and market information provided on U.Today is intended for informational purposes only. U.Today is not liable for any financial losses incurred while trading cryptocurrencies. Conduct your own research by contacting financial experts before making any investment decisions. We believe that all content is accurate as of the date of publication, but certain offers mentioned may no longer be available.
At the start of the new week, two major treasury transactions were recorded in the stablecoin market, clearly illustrating the division of digital capital into two parallel and non-overlapping directions.
According to on-chain tracker, Ripple carried out a scheduled issuance of $10 million in RLUSD stablecoins on the XRP Ledger. Almost simultaneously, Tether conducted a routine issuance of $1 billion in USDT on the Tron blockchain, increasing its treasury inventory on the network to $91 billion.
The difference in volume is explained by the fundamentally different business models of the two issuers.
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With its enormous turnover, Tether serves the needs of the mass retail market and crypto trading, where immediate access to deep liquidity is critical.
Fresh $10 million RLUSD mint on XRP Ledger (XRPL) by Ripple, Source: XRP ScanRipple, in turn, is not attempting to compete in the mass-market segment. RLUSD currently has a market capitalization of $1.52 billion, approximately 20% below its May peaks, while the token is issued selectively to meet specific B2B requests from commercial companies through the Ripple Mint platform.
Whales defend $1 XRP floor as Ripple injects fresh capitalThe latest $10 million mint coincided with a major increase in large-investor activity on the spot market. While Ripple's treasury regulates the stablecoin's supply under NYDFS supervision, large holders, or whales, began aggressively moving funds and accumulated more than 380 million XRP over the past week.
These maneuvers unfolded around the psychologically important $1 level for XRP, which major players are defending as a key support level.
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Ultimately, these developments reflect the current status quo. While Tether retains its position as the main settlement instrument in retail crypto transactions, Ripple is testing its B2B product within the narrow corporate payments niche and undergoing technical adaptation as large investors build positions ahead of a potential breakout from the market's prolonged summer consolidation.
Experti varují, že kvantové počítače by mohly do roku 2028 prolomit dnešní kryptografii a ohrozit Bitcoin i stablecoiny. Nejzranitelnější mají být administrativní klíče u USDT.
The prospect of quantum computers breaking today’s cryptographic defenses is raising urgent concerns among blockchain security experts. Analysts believe that the first indication of quantum-powered breaches may not be high-profile thefts, but a series of unexplained breaches targeting multiple crypto wallets at once.
Quantum computers and blockchain securityQuantus Network CEO and co-founder Christopher Smith warned that a sufficiently advanced quantum computer could derive private keys from public ones exposed on blockchain networks. This capability would allow attackers to move funds without infiltrating wallets, devices, or exchange infrastructures. Smith noted that in such events, there would be no discernible traces of how the breach occurred: only the fact that funds had been withdrawn.
His warning follows significant progress in quantum algorithms, which have recently reduced the estimated computational resources necessary to attack elliptic-curve cryptography—a mechanism widely used by leading blockchains for security.
Quantum computing refers to a new paradigm in computation, leveraging quantum bits (qubits) to solve certain problems much faster than classical computers.
Mini dictionary: Elliptic-curve cryptography is a method of encrypting data that relies on the mathematics of elliptic curves, widely used for its efficiency in securing digital transactions and communications.
Potential quantum targets in cryptoWhile much of the crypto community’s concern centers on the fate of Satoshi Nakamoto’s untouched Bitcoin—valued at $63 billion—Smith suggested that more attractive targets could be found elsewhere. He identified administrative keys for multi-chain stablecoins such as Tether’s USDT as especially valuable. According to Smith, a successful quantum attack on such administrative wallets could enable malicious actors to rapidly mint new tokens and flood the market before issuers had time to react.
Tether, the company behind USDT, manages the world’s largest stablecoin, which operates across several blockchains. Some of these networks have already taken initial steps to prepare for a post-quantum cryptography era.
Security researcher Sean Cheetham from Blockchain Capital predicted that attackers might avoid high-visibility targets and instead quietly access exchange “hot wallets,” which routinely handle user funds and are often linked to public keys.
Smith emphasized that an attacker could disguise a quantum theft as a standard compromise, providing alternative explanations such as a lost key, thus delaying detection.
Cheetham explained that such incidents would appear ordinary, as the true method of compromise would remain undetected under current investigative techniques.
Timeline for quantum riskRecent advances in artificial intelligence are accelerating the potential impact of quantum computing. In March, Google pushed up its post-quantum transition plans to 2029, following an AI-assisted breakthrough indicating that cracking elliptic curve cryptography could require fewer qubits than previously anticipated.
Roy Blackstone, CEO of crypto security firm NGRAVE, remarked that earlier quantum risk assessments did not anticipate such rapid progress in AI and quantum algorithm research.
Despite these developments, estimates for when a quantum computer will be capable of breaking cryptographic protections remain highly variable. Smith, who leads Quantus Network, said there is a “50-50” chance this milestone could be reached by 2028, given the current pace of research.
Cheetham forecasted that the early 2030s were almost a certainty for the arrival of this technology, though he acknowledged an earlier breakthrough remains possible. Michael Coates, chief information security officer at the Solana Foundation, declined to offer a timeline, stating that uncertainty prevails and the timeframe has constantly shifted.
Blackstone observed that despite disagreements over timing, major blockchain networks are already preparing for post-quantum migration. He warned that failure to do so could have disastrous consequences.
Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.
Washington uvalil sankce na Shelbit a Aban Tether 7. srpna 2026 kvůli podezření, že podporují finanční sítě napojené na Írán. OFAC zároveň označil i Siavashe Kayvanpoura a další osoby a firmy spojené s těmito toky.
Washington sanctioned Shelbit and Aban Tether on August 7, 2026, accusing the two crypto platforms of supporting financial networks linked to Iran. Behind these little-known names lies a network of companies, online betting, and wallets associated with the Revolutionary Guards.
In brief The OFAC listed Shelbit, Aban Tether, and several related persons and companies on its sanctions lists on August 7, 2026. The U.S. Treasury describes three categories of crypto transfers of more than 1 million, 2 million, and 2 million dollars around Shelbit, the IRGC, and Nobitex. Assets under U.S. jurisdiction are blocked, while actors continuing certain transactions face sanctions. Shelbit and Aban Tether enter OFAC’s crosshairs Shelbit was already under the spotlight before the American decision. Cointribune had recently documented the Shelbit dossier and its transfers to Binance, amid suspicions of money laundering and sanctions evasion. On August 7, Washington took a step further by directly listing the platform and its alleged operator in its sanctions framework.
In its press release published on August 7, 2026, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), a branch of the U.S. Treasury responsible for enforcing economic sanctions, targets two platforms: Shelbit and Aban Tether. The agency also targets Siavash Kayvanpour, described as the head of a network of companies established notably in Georgia, the United Arab Emirates, and Poland.
The initial assessment reported by Cointelegraph mentions more than 5 million dollars in transfers detailed by the administration. However, the official statement distinguishes several movements: over 1 million dollars are said to have circulated from wallets controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to Shelbit, more than 2 million from Shelbit to the IRGC, then over 2 million from addresses linked to Kayvanpour to Nobitex.
This breakdown does not allow to confirm that all these amounts represent entirely distinct funds.
Aban Tether follows a different mechanism. According to OFAC, this Iranian platform processed millions of dollars in transactions with Nobitex, Wallex, Bitpin, and Ramzinex, four Iranian exchanges already designated by Washington. The agency sanctions Aban Tether under its activity in the Iranian financial sector.
A network of companies and betting behind crypto flows The dossier goes beyond the two platforms displayed on the list. The Treasury describes Shelbit as the gateway for a vast network of Persian betting sites, run by two Iranian influencers convicted in 2023 for illegal gambling. Tens of millions of dollars from this group are said to have passed through Shelbit, while these sites retained access to the Iranian payment system.
Washington also links several companies to Kayvanpour: SHPS Shelbit in Georgia, Shelbit General Trading in the United Arab Emirates, Shelbit Technologies in Poland, as well as Crypto Home DMCC and NFT Home DMCC in Dubai. The Emirati regulator VARA had already taken measures against Shelbit General Trading in January 2025 and July 2026. Despite these interventions, the activity continued.
This offensive is part of a larger sequence. In May, Scott Bessent claimed that the United States had recovered one billion dollars of cryptos linked to Iran, without detailing all the operations involved. The new decision is therefore not an isolated strike: it expands American pressure to providers connecting wallets, local platforms, and commercial networks.
We will continue to increase economic pressure. Whether in dollars, rials, or crypto, the Treasury will track and dismantle illicit financial networks keeping the regime afloat.
Scott Bessent, U.S. Treasury Secretary The State Department also offers up to 15 million dollars for any information that can disrupt the IRGC’s and its branches’ financial mechanisms. This amount shows the priority given to monitoring these networks.
What the sanctions change for crypto actors Being listed on OFAC’s lists has immediate effects. Properties and interests held in the United States, or controlled by Americans, must be blocked and reported. The rule extends to entities owned 50% or more, directly or indirectly, by one or more sanctioned persons.
Restrictions do not stop at U.S. borders. Financial institutions and foreign companies can face sanctions if they conduct certain operations with designated persons. OFAC can also impose civil penalties based on strict liability without having to prove intent to circumvent rules.
This is the sensitive point for exchanges. Transfers on a public blockchain leave traces, but identifying real beneficiaries still depends on internal controls, customer data, and cooperation between authorities. A platform that maintains relationships with a sanctioned address or company can therefore see its access to banking partners and the U.S. market severely compromised.
In short, Washington tightens the noose on the infrastructure enabling funds to circulate, not just on their final holders. The designation of Shelbit, targeting of Aban Tether, and threat of secondary sanctions push intermediaries to review their controls. The risk of sanctions for maritime companies had already shown how far this exposure could extend. Now, crypto platforms are warned.
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Fenelon L.
Passionné par le Bitcoin, j'aime explorer les méandres de la blockchain et des cryptos et je partage mes découvertes avec la communauté. Mon rêve est de vivre dans un monde où la vie privée et la liberté financière sont garanties pour tous, et je crois fermement que Bitcoin est l'outil qui peut rendre cela possible.
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The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and should not be taken as investment advice. Do your own research before taking any investment decisions.
Tether rozšiřuje své tokenizační aktivity do Saúdské Arábie a začne s institucionálními nemovitostními aktivy. Platforma Hadron má sloužit k jejich vydávání a správě pro institucionální investory.
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (Ekrem Osmanoglu/Unsplash)Summary
Tether will provide the tokenization infrastructure for institutional real estate assets in Saudi Arabia.The initiative gives Tether a foothold in the Middle East country pursuing financial modernization under its Vision 2030 program.First Data will act as issuer and market operator, while BKN301 will connect the platform with banking and compliance systems.Tether, best known for issuing USDT, the world’s most widely used stablecoin, is expanding its push into real-world asset tokenization to bring institutional-grade real estate asset onchain in Saudi Arabia.
The company said Thursday that its tokenization platform, dubbed Hadron, will provide the technology to issue and manage tokenized real estate assets for institutional investors in the country. Tether is teaming up with Saudi partners First Data and fintech company BKN301 on the effort.
The operating model could later expand beyond real estate into energy, infrastructure finance and other real-world assets, the firms said.
The announcement marks Tether's latest effort to expand beyond stablecoins into tokenization, a fast-growing application of blockchain rails in finance. The firm launched Hadron in 2024 to simplify asset tokenization and is also the issuer of the largest tokenized gold offering, the $2.6 billion XAUT.
Banks and asset managers have increasingly turned to tokenization to represent traditional assets such as money market funds, private credit, real estate and equities on blockchains, arguing the technology can streamline settlement, broaden investor access and improve capital efficiency. Citi projected that the tokenized securities market could reach $5.5 trillion by 2030.
Saudi Arabia has emerged as one of the markets exploring the technology as part of its Vision 2030 economic diversification strategy. The kingdom’s strategy focuses on deploying enterprise blockchain across sectors such as financial services, government, and supply chain management.
“With Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia stands out as an ideal market for demonstrating the impact of platforms like Hadron by Tether,” CEO Paolo Ardoino said in a statement.
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The Evolution of the Crypto CEX Landscape: A Case Study on Binance
The Evolution of the Crypto CEX Landscape: A Case Study on Binance
Binance remains crypto’s leading exchange, expanding from spot and derivatives into RWAs, payments, savings, yield, and broader financial services.
Jun 29, 2026
Binance remains crypto’s leading exchange, expanding from spot and derivatives into RWAs, payments, savings, yield, and broader financial services.
Why it matters:
Binance remains crypto’s leading exchange, expanding from spot and derivatives into RWAs, payments, savings, yield, and broader financial services.
Tether ve 2. čtvrtletí 2026 přikoupil 14 tun zlata a zvýšil rezervy na 146 tun v hodnotě asi 18,8 miliardy USD. Zlato nyní tvoří zhruba 10 % jeho rezerv.
Tether, the issuer of the USDT stablecoin, has expanded its gold holdings significantly in the second quarter of 2026, acquiring 14 additional tonnes. This purchase brings Tether’s total gold reserves to 146 tonnes, valued at approximately $18.8 billion. As a result, Tether is now one of the largest private holders of gold outside of government entities and central banks. This substantial increase in gold holdings comes as the company looks to bolster the backing of its stablecoin, which remains the largest dollar-pegged currency in the market.
The move by Tether suggests a strategic decision to diversify and strengthen its reserve assets, with gold now representing about 10% of its $187.8 billion reserves. The acquisition may have implications for the broader gold market, as it indicates increased demand from private institutions. Analysts are observing how this development might influence gold prices, especially as market participants assess the potential impact on future gold price movements.
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Market data currently reflects limited immediate impact on gold reaching higher price thresholds by the end of December 2026. However, the acquisition by a major player like Tether could play a role in shaping market sentiment and expectations in the coming months.
Key Takeaways Tether’s acquisition of 14 tonnes of gold appears to suggest a strategic reserve diversification effort. This purchase positions Tether as a significant private holder of gold, potentially influencing market perceptions. Current market pricing suggests limited immediate expectations for gold to hit $15,000 by year-end. What to Watch Market participants will be closely watching central banks and other major institutional players for any similar moves that could further influence gold demand. Analysts will also monitor economic indicators such as Federal Reserve interest rate decisions and geopolitical developments that could impact gold prices. Should central banks increase their gold purchases or geopolitical tensions rise, this could be consistent with scenarios where gold prices move towards higher thresholds.
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Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Analýza 2 955 zmrazení Tetheru na Ethereu a Tronu ukázala, že rizikové adresy často stihly přesunout prostředky ještě před samotným zmrazením. V průměru trvá od návrhu zmrazení do jeho provedení 2 hodiny, 16 minut a 15 sekund.
PANews reported on August 6 that FlashRescue co-founder @DarcyAri stated on X platform that in a recent case being jointly investigated with a partner, funds in a Tether address were moved while Tether was executing a freeze proposal, causing the amount frozen to decrease. Further review by FlashRescue found that this is not an isolated incident. As of August 3, 2026, an analysis of 2,955 Tether freeze events across the Ethereum and Tron networks revealed the following among high-risk addresses involved in entity sanctions, fraudulent activities, money laundering, FATF blacklisted jurisdictions, malicious attacks, and more: 60 addresses emptied their assets and completed front-running transfers before the freeze was formally enforced, with a total net outflow of 20,429,847 USDT. On average, transfers began 13 minutes and 59 seconds after a freeze proposal was submitted, and major funds were moved within 15 minutes and 15 seconds. Another 113 addresses transferred part of their assets before the freeze execution, involving approximately 35.5243 million USDT.
Tether takes an average of 2 hours, 16 minutes, and 15 seconds from submitting a freeze proposal to formally executing the freeze. There is a significant time window between the public disclosure of the freeze proposal and the actual enforcement. In one case on July 3, an address cluster moved funds consecutively within minutes, sent them to the same address, and then split and transferred them further. The above cases indicate that some high-risk addresses may be actively monitoring Tether freeze proposals and exploiting the time gap between proposal disclosure and actual enforcement to conduct front-running transfers. This mechanism leads to failures in freezing illicit funds and undermines the effectiveness of sanctions, anti-money laundering, and law enforcement assistance measures.
Tether vykázal ve 2. čtvrtletí čistý provozní zisk asi 1,5 miliardy USD, ale jeho rezerva klesla na 4,11 miliardy USD, tedy zhruba na polovinu. Audit od jedné z firem Big Four stále nepřišel.
A profitable quarter still ended with about half the buffer it started with, and the Big Four audit Tether commissioned in March has yet to produce an audited statement.
Original Image Credits: photodaria / Shutterstock.com
Posted August 3, 2026 at 8:31 am EST.
Tether reported roughly $1.5 billion in net operating profit for the second quarter on Friday, and disclosed in the same release that the cushion sitting between USDT holders and the company’s obligations had fallen to $4.11 billion, about half what it was three months earlier.
The BDO attestation puts total assets at $187.75 billion against $183.64 billion in liabilities as of June 30. Excess reserves stood just above $8.23 billion at the end of March. A quarter that generated $1.5 billion in profit therefore closed with roughly $4 billion less headroom than it opened with.
This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.
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Gold and Bitcoin Did the Damage Profit and buffer moved in opposite directions because they sit in different parts of the balance sheet. Treasuries and repurchase agreements produced the earnings. The buffer absorbed markdowns on the assets Tether has spent two years accumulating. Gold slid about 15% to just over $4,000 an ounce, which cut the value of a bigger pile of metal to $18.84 billion from $19.84 billion. The bitcoin price used in the report dropped to $58,600 from $68,200, taking that position to $5.80 billion from $6.62 billion.
Tether bought through both declines, adding 14 tons of gold to reach 146.2 metric tons and about 1,796 BTC to reach 98,933. Those two holdings together now sit near $24.6 billion, close to 13% of total assets. Measured against the $184.6 billion of USDT in circulation, the remaining buffer works out at roughly 2.2%.
Chief Executive Paolo Ardoino presented the quarter as a stress test survived. “Through all of the volatility, USD₮ remained fully backed with our reserves still exceeding liabilities by $4.11 billion,” he said in the release. Tether also cut secured lending by $2.38 billion, or 15%, without naming borrowers or the collateral involved.
The Audit Has Still Not Landed On the audit, Tether said in the quarterly release only that “the Big Four audit process continued.” The company engaged a Big Four firm in March for the first full audit of its reserves, and four months on the quarterly disclosure is still an attestation from BDO. The difference matters: an attestation confirms figures on a single date, while an audit examines how assets were valued and managed across the whole period. Circle, which issues USDC, already reports audited accounts.
USDT issuance grew just $446 million over the quarter, though Tether said its share of a shrinking stablecoin market climbed above 60%.
Related Listen: Stripe Bid $53B for PayPal: Who Actually Wins Stablecoin Payments?
AI-assisted content: This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools and was reviewed, edited, and fact-checked by a member of the Unchained editorial team before publication.
Tether oznámil pokles přebytečných rezerv o 4,1 miliardy USD z 8,2 miliardy USD na 4,1 miliardy USD a za první pololetí vykázal ztrátu 3,2 miliardy USD. Zároveň uvedl provozní zisk 1,5 miliardy USD.
Tether reported Friday that its excess reserves fell by $4.1 billion from the previous quarter amid a sharp year-on-year deterioration in its financial results.
At the end of the first quarter, the stablecoin issuer of USDT said the value of its assets exceeded its liabilities by $8.2 billion. On Friday, that figure had fallen to $4.1 billion.
Tether's most recent financial report also showed a negative $3.2 billion financial result for the first half of the year. That implies the company posted a loss of more than $4 billion, given that in the first quarter it reported $1 billion in net profit.
The company, which is perhaps the most profitable company in crypto, didn't immediately respond to a request for clarification.
Volatile markets The company highlighted it had generated a net operating profit of $1.5 billion during the fiscal period.
"Tether had a great second quarter of 2026 ... despite highly volatile global markets," CEO Paolo Ardoino said on social media. "USDT user base continued to grow, reaching the new all-time-high of [more than 650 million]."
In its Q2 release, Tether emphasized “net operating profit” rather than net profit. Net operating profit generally excludes unrealized gains or losses caused by changes in the value of assets such as bitcoin and gold. Last year, Tether reported $4.9 billion in net profit.
Like leading BTC treasury Strategy, Tether marks its bitcoin holdings to market, meaning price declines reduce their reported value.
The value of Tether’s bitcoin and precious-metals holdings fell during the quarter. Its bitcoin position declined to $5.8 billion from $6.6 billion in the previous quarter. Its precious-metals position, consisting of physical gold, fell to $18.8 billion from $19.8 billion, even though Tether added 14 tons of gold.
Tether did not disclose what drove the remainder of its negative financial result. Bitcoin and gold both shed more than 10% of their price during the second quarter.
The company also reported that its secured-lending exposure declined by $2.4 billion.
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Tether ve 2. čtvrtletí vykázal čistý provozní zisk 1,5 miliardy USD a rezervy převyšovaly závazky o 4,11 miliardy USD. Zároveň zvýšil oběh USD₮ na přibližně 184,6 miliardy USD₮ a držby zlata o 14 tun na více než 146 tun.
Tether Posts Strong Q2 Performance, Generates $1.5B Net Operating Profit, Maintains $4.11B Reserve Buffer, and Expands Gold Holdings to More Than 146 Tons
Tether International, S.A. de C.V., today published its attestation for Q2 of 2026, prepared by BDO, a top-five global independent accounting firm. The report confirms the accuracy of Tether’s Financial Figures and Reserves Report and provides an overview of the assets backing USD₮ as of June 30, 2026.
USD₮ issuance increased, with approximately $184.6 billion in tokens issued at the end of Q2, around $446 million higher than at the end of Q1 despite a decrease in the industry’s total market cap. USD₮’s resilience extended its market share to over 60% of the total stablecoin market. The results demonstrate the strength and resilience of Tether’s reserve strategy through significant volatility across gold and Bitcoin.
Tether’s reserves continue to be centered on short-duration, high-quality liquid assets. Its net operating profit, led by U.S. Treasury and repo, reached approximately $1.50 billion for the quarter. The majority of reserves remain in U.S. government-backed instruments and short-term liquidity facilities, providing the liquidity needed to manage redemptions across different market conditions. As a result, the Company remained one of the world’s largest buyers and holders of U.S. Treasuries.
At the end of the quarter, Tether’s reserves exceeded its liabilities by approximately $4.11 billion, demonstrating the resilience of the Company’s reserve structure through sharp market volatility. Tether also reduced its secured lending exposure by approximately $2.38 billion (15%).
The Management of the Company asserts the following as of June 30, 2026:
The Company’s total assets amount to US$ 187,751,426,411 The Company’s total liabilities amount to US$ 183,641,897,215, of which US$ 183,622,105,630 relate to digital tokens issued The Company’s assets exceed its liabilities by US$4,109,529,196 “Q2 demonstrated the strength of Tether’s reserve strategy under real market pressure,” said Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether. “The assets that back some of Tether’s reserves were tested directly during the quarter. Through all of the volatility, USD₮ remained fully backed with our reserves still exceeding liabilities by $4.11 billion. Our net operating profit for the quarter was $1.50 billion, led by a strong U.S Treasury portfolio and repo performance. We remained one of the world’s largest buyers of U.S. Treasuries, reduced secured lending by $2.38 billion, and added 14 tons of physical gold. At the same time, our global user base continued to grow by more than 30 million users. These results show that Tether has the liquidity, discipline, and scale to remain resilient across market cycles while continuing to serve hundreds of millions of users around the world.”
USD₮ continues to serve as financial infrastructure for people and businesses across global markets. Tether remains focused on maintaining a liquid and diversified reserve structure capable of supporting that demand at scale. During the quarter, the Big Four audit process continued alongside the development of Tether’s broader technology and financial infrastructure ecosystem.
For more information, please refer to the latest Financial Figures and Reserves Report here
OFAC sankcionoval dvě firmy napojené na IRGC za údajné vydírání lodí v Hormuzském průlivu prostřednictvím povinného pojištění. Jedna z nich přijímala platby v bitcoinu (BTC) a dalších digitálních aktivech.
The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned two firms accused of supporting an IRGC-backed scheme that allegedly extorted commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz by requiring them to purchase maritime insurance.
Wednesday’s designations hit the Persian Gulf Marine Insurance Company and HormuzSafe Marine Services Authority, known as Hormuz Safe. Treasury says the policies extract revenue while covering risks that Iran itself creates.
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How Iran’s Hormuz Insurance Scheme Drew US Sanctions The IRGC reportedly began collecting transit fees from tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz in April, with charges starting at approximately $1 per barrel.
The Treasury said the insurance scheme was created to offset revenue lost following Operation Epic Fury. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent linked the initiative to Iran’s worsening economic conditions.
“With its economy in freefall and inflation in the triple digits, the regime is desperate for cash,” he said.
According to the department, Iran established the “illegitimate schemes” through the Persian Gulf Marine Insurance Company (PGMIC) and HormuzSafe Marine Services Authority.
It said Iran’s Ministry of Economy developed HormuzSafe. It offers insurance, traffic control, security, and emergency response services to vessels transiting the strait.
The firm accepts payments in Bitcoin (BTC) and other digital assets as part of Iran’s efforts to circumvent Western sanctions.
The Treasury also noted that Iran’s insurance regulator created the Persian Gulf Marine Insurance Company, which issues policies approved by the Persian Gulf Strait Authority.
OFAC sanctioned the IRGC-backed authority on May 27. It has now designated both the Persian Gulf Marine Insurance Company and HormuzSafe Marine Services Authority under Executive Order 13902 for operating in Iran’s financial sector.
In addition, OFAC sanctioned eight shipping companies and identified eight oil tankers as blocked property. The operators are registered in Hong Kong, the Marshall Islands, and China. According to the Treasury, the vessels transported Iranian crude oil and petroleum products.
The agency has now sanctioned more than 100 shadow fleet vessels since January. The latest measure is part of a broader US enforcement action against Iran.
In mid-July, the Treasury sanctioned four cryptocurrency wallets linked to Iran’s central bank. At the same time, Tether froze approximately $131 million in USDT held in those addresses.
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Visa uvedla, že u stablecoinů zůstane „multi-coin, multi-chain“ a nebude vybírat vítěze, i když její platforma teprve začíná podporovat Open USD. Platforma má zároveň dál fungovat i pro USDT a USDC.
Visa Chief Executive Ryan McInerney said the payments company will remain neutral among stablecoins as Open USD prepares to enter a market led by Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC.
Summary
Visa says its stablecoin strategy will remain multi-coin and multi-chain rather than backing one winner. Open USD plans to launch later this year with more than 140 participating global companies. Visa’s stablecoin platform initially supports Open USD while retaining interoperability with existing settlement products worldwide. During Visa’s July 28 fiscal third-quarter earnings call, McInerney said the company would remain “multi-coin, multi-chain” and that its role was “not to pick winners.” Instead, Visa plans to help clients connect securely to whichever stablecoins, networks and infrastructure gain adoption.
Visa separates Open USD support from a single-token bet Visa is one of more than 140 companies supporting Open Standard, the independent consortium developing Open USD. Other participants include Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase, BlackRock, BNY, Google and several global banks.
However, McInerney’s comments show that Visa does not view its involvement as an exclusive commitment to OUSD. The company already supports several stablecoins and blockchains through settlement, card and money-movement products. Visa previously described its technical approach as a “multi-coin and multi-chain foundation.”
ARK Invest researcher Lorenzo Valente interpreted the response as evidence that partner support may be “closer to a soft LOI than a strategic bet.” That is an analyst’s view, not a disclosed Visa contract term. Neither Visa nor Open Standard has published commitments showing how much capital, distribution or balance-sheet support each partner must provide.
On @Visa earnings call, the company was asked whether OpenUSD would compete with @circle , @tether, and the established stablecoin players.
Visa’s response:
“Visa, going forward, will remain multi-coin, multi-chain. Our role is not to pick winners. Our role is to help clients…
— Lorenzo Valente (@LorenzoARK) July 28, 2026 Open Standard plans to launch Open USD later in 2026. Its website says businesses will be able to mint and redeem OUSD without fees or volume limits, while most revenue from the reserves will return to participants that adopt and distribute the token.
That model differs from the issuer-led structures used by USDT and USDC, where the issuing company controls reserve management and related economics. Open Standard says an independent management team and partner-led governance will oversee OUSD. These are planned product features, and the token has not yet launched.
Notably, Open USD’s launch raised questions about Circle’s reserve-income model. Circle shares fell 17.5% on June 30, although Russell index removals also contributed to that day’s decline, making it difficult to isolate OUSD’s effect.
Visa is building infrastructure across stablecoins Visa’s practical commitment is clearer in its own product releases. On July 16, the company introduced the Visa Stablecoin Platform for banks, fintechs and crypto companies. The platform initially provides access to Open USD, including minting, burning, storage and transfers through a Visa-managed environment.
The company said the platform will also connect with its existing stablecoin settlement, linked-card and money-movement services. In June, Visa reported that its stablecoin settlement activity had reached an annualized run rate of about $7 billion as of March 2026.
Additionally, Visa’s stablecoin platform was described as a route for institutions to use Open USD without building every wallet, security and treasury function internally. Visa’s broader structure could also allow it to serve clients choosing USDC, USDT or another regulated token.
Open USD’s launch will test partner commitment Open Standard has not announced an exact launch date, initial circulating supply or confirmed transaction volume. Because OUSD is not yet live, there is no verified on-chain activity or market capitalization to compare with USDT and USDC.
The next test will be whether partners integrate OUSD into real payment, settlement and trading products after launch. Visa has already built an initial access route through its platform, but McInerney’s comments indicate the company will continue supporting competing tokens and networks.
Therefore, Open USD may gain distribution through Visa without becoming Visa’s exclusive stablecoin. Adoption will depend on reserve arrangements, regulatory compliance, partner integrations and actual customer demand rather than the size of the consortium alone.
Celo přidalo nativní podporu pro USAT od společnosti Tether, včetně mintování, vykupování a použití jako gas token. Je to druhá síť po Ethereu, která USAT hostí nativně.
Celo has added native support for USAT, a US dollar stablecoin backed by Tether, expanding regulated digital dollar access across its ecosystem.
The deployment, announced on Wednesday, makes Celo the second network after Ethereum to host native USAT and introduces several features from launch, including native minting, redemption and the ability to use USAT as a gas currency for transactions.
Issued by Anchorage Digital Bank, USAT is backed by reserves custodied by Cantor Fitzgerald and designed to comply with the requirements of the GENIUS Act.
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Celo said its gas payment model removes a common crypto onboarding hurdle by allowing users to pay fees with stablecoins rather than requiring a separate blockchain token. The network’s fee abstraction technology, now formalized under CIP-64, has already driven stablecoin-based gas payments, with more than 50% of Celo fees paid using stablecoins, the team added.
The launch strengthens the relationship between Tether assets and Celo. The network has become the top distribution platform for USDT by weekly active users, accounting for 28% of USDT transfers across blockchains. Celo also dominates adoption of XAUt0, holding more than 90% of unique holders for the omnichain Tether Gold asset.
Celo CEO Marek Olszewski said USAT will bring compliant dollar infrastructure to users already relying on the network for payments, savings and commerce.
“Bringing Anchorage and Tether’s trusted, compliant stablecoin infrastructure to Celo is the critical next step in our work building a trillion-dollar onchain economy that is more accessible, efficient, and equitable than the systems that came before,” Olszewski stated.
Tether US CEO Bo Hines added that Celo’s existing stablecoin activity made it a natural expansion target.
USAT adoption will continue through Celo-based applications. Opera’s MiniPay wallet, which has more than 18 million users, plans to add support for USAT, expanding its existing Tether asset offerings. Valora has already integrated the stablecoin, while additional support is expected from protocols including Morpho, Squid and Uniswap.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Tether podepsal s Nairobi Securities Exchange memorandum o porozumění, aby prozkoumal tokenizaci, blockchain a vzdělávání v oblasti digitálních aktiv v Keni. Součástí je i možnost využití USD₮ jako vrstvy pro digitální vypořádání.
Tether Signs MoU with the Nairobi Securities Exchange to Explore Digital Assets Use Cases, Tokenization, Blockchain Technology, and Digital Asset Education in Africa
28 July 2026 – Tether, the largest company in the digital asset industry, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) to explore digital asset education, tokenization, and financial market innovation in Nairobi.
The NSE, established in 1954, is one of the leading African exchanges, based in Kenya, that offers trading facilities to people seeking exposure to Kenya’s and Africa’s economic growth. With a market cap of approximately $26.4 billion, NSE plays a vital role in Kenya’s economic growth by encouraging savings and investment and helping local and international companies access cost-effective capital. NSE is a member of the Association of Futures Markets and is a partner exchange in the United Nations-led SSE initiative. The NSE provides a world-class platform for trading equities, debt securities, and derivatives for people in Nairobi and the diaspora.
Tether and NSE aim to close the gap between where Kenyan investors are today and where they need to be by proposing an investor education program through training sessions, workshops, and other accessible, structured knowledge-transfer initiatives on capital markets in the digital age, targeting participants from NSE-listed brokers and retail investor groups, to build awareness and participation in capital markets through digital assets.
This MoU also aims to support the development and implementation of a blockchain-based market infrastructure for the tokenization and instant settlement of securities within the NSE using Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) and enable fractionalized access to securities for both local and diaspora investors via the Hadron platform. Tether and NSE will also design and pilot secured onboarding flows tailored to the Kenyan regulatory environment to streamline Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) processes.
Another key area of focus is the potential development of Real World Asset (RWA) Tokenization, which will explore the Hadron platform’s features and functionality to enable the issuance and trading of tokenized securities and other financial instruments. To promote financial freedom and optimize the institution’s financial workflow, Tether aims to support the integration of instant and atomic settlement mechanisms to reduce the institution’s current three-level settlement cycle. Additionally, both parties will assess the viability of integrating USD₮ as a potential digital settlement infrastructure layer to enhance liquidity and attract increased capital flow where permitted by.
“The use cases for digital assets are evolving, from crypto into real-life applications and, ultimately, cross-border institutional finance. This is what true freedom means. We’re glad to deepen our collaboration with the Nairobi Securities Exchange to advance practical institutional adoption and technological progress. Our goal is to streamline operations and enable efficient, transparent, accountable, and sustainable processes, while protecting data and privacy,” said Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether.
“This MoU is fully aligned with the NSE’s 2025–2029 Strategic Plan, which is anchored on leveraging technology, deepening market participation, and expanding access to investment opportunities for all investors. By collaborating with Tether, we are exploring innovative technologies that have the potential to modernize market infrastructure, enhance operational efficiency, and broaden investor access while maintaining the highest standards of market integrity and regulatory compliance. As we execute our strategy, partnerships such as this will play a critical role in positioning the NSE as a globally competitive exchange and a catalyst for Kenya’s economic growth,” said Frank Mwiti, Chief Executive Officer, NSE.
USAT went from $22 million to $140.8 million in a single month, the fastest growth of any regulated dollar token this year. In the same window, its offshore parent shed roughly six billion. One of those numbers is a rounding error on the other, and the gap between them is the most interesting structure in stablecoins.
Summary
USAT, Tether’s US-regulated stablecoin, launched in January with a $10 million initial supply, reached $17.6 million by January 31, $22 million in March, and $140.8 million by April 30, a 540% month-over-month expansion confirmed in a Deloitte-signed reserve report. It remains minuscule in context: roughly 0.08% of USDT’s circulation, about 8% of Ripple’s RLUSD, 2.5% of PayPal’s PYUSD, and under 0.2% of Circle’s USDC. The parent moved the other way, with USDT contracting from a May peak near $190 billion to roughly $184 billion in late July, a drawdown of about $6 billion over sixty days. The structure is unusual: Anchorage Digital Bank issues the token, Cantor Fitzgerald custodies reserves as primary dealer, and the US entity is led by the former executive director of the White House Crypto Council. The disclosure runs backwards from expectations, with the small compliant twin publishing Deloitte-signed reserve reports while the $184 billion parent, whose reserves do not currently meet the federal standard, operates on attestations. There is a specific kind of corporate structure that appears when a very large business decides it may eventually need to be a different business, and Tether built one in January.
USAT is a dollar token issued through a federally chartered bank, designed from the ground up to satisfy the American stablecoin statute, run by a separate US entity with its own chief executive, and it is, by any measure of scale, almost nothing. It launched at $10 million. By the end of its first week, it held $17.6 million. Six months later, after the fastest month of growth any regulated dollar token has posted this year, it holds roughly $141 million, which is about eight hundredths of one percent of the $184 billion its parent has in circulation. Read one way, that is a failure to launch. Read another, it is a 540% month, faster growth than Circle, PayPal, or Ripple managed at any point this year, off a base small enough that the percentage means less than it appears. The interesting reading is the third one: USAT is not primarily a product. It is an option, written on a regulatory outcome, held by a company whose main business currently sits outside the perimeter the option would let it enter. This piece takes the numbers seriously, examines the structure that produced them, and asks what the twin is actually for.
The numbers, in order Start with the sequence, because the growth story and the scale story are both true and point in opposite directions.
USAT launched on January 27 with a $10 million initial supply as an ERC-20 token, immediately available on several major exchanges. Anchorage Digital Bank’s first reserve attestation, dated January 31, reported 17,501,391 tokens outstanding against $17,604,716 in reserves, roughly 0.6% overcollateralized. By the end of March, circulation stood near $22 million. Then April: the Deloitte-signed reserve report published in late May showed circulating supply at $140.8 million as of April 30, an increase of about 540% in a single month, which the US entity’s chief executive attributed to institutional treasury operations, settlement flows, and regulated dollar liquidity management.
Now the context that the percentage conceals. Circle’s USDC sits around $75 billion. PayPal’s PYUSD is roughly $5.5 billion. Ripple’s RLUSD, itself a young institutional token, is about $1.7 billion. USAT at $141 million is therefore under a fifth of one percent of USDC, roughly two and a half percent of PYUSD, and about eight percent of RLUSD, which makes it the smallest meaningful entrant among the regulated dollar tokens competing for American institutional use. Against its own parent, the ratio is starker still: USDT’s circulation of roughly $184 billion makes USAT about 0.08% of the group’s outstanding dollar liabilities.
One further number completes the picture and is the reason this is a story instead of a launch update. While the twin grew, the parent shrank. USDT peaked near $190 billion in May and stood at approximately $184.1 billion on July 21, a decline of roughly $5.4 to $6 billion over sixty days, alongside a broader stablecoin market contraction of about $10 billion from its May high. The compliant American token is growing quickly from nothing while the offshore token it exists alongside is contracting by amounts larger than the twin’s entire supply, several times over, every month.
Strategy bought $200M in Bitcoin, Deloitte audited USAT reserves, and Kazakhstan plans a $350M crypto reserve allocation: weekly recap.
— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) March 8, 2026 The structure, and who is in it The corporate architecture explains more about the strategy than any growth figure, and each participant is worth naming.
Anchorage Digital Bank, N.A. is the issuer. It holds a national trust bank charter granted conditionally by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in 2021, well before the current administration, and describes itself as the first federally regulated crypto bank. Its chief executive has framed USAT as evidence of what stablecoin issuance looks like inside the US banking system, under supervision, with accountability. That is the structural core of the arrangement: Tether does not issue USAT. A chartered American bank does, under federal supervision, which is precisely the arrangement the offshore parent cannot currently replicate.
Cantor Fitzgerald serves as designated reserve custodian and preferred primary dealer, the same firm that has handled Tether’s Treasury holdings, and its former chief executive is now the sitting Commerce Secretary. The US entity is led by Bo Hines, previously executive director of the White House Council of Advisers on Digital Assets, appointed in September to run the American vehicle. Neither fact implies impropriety, and both were reported at launch. Together they describe something worth stating plainly: the compliance vehicle for the world’s largest offshore stablecoin issuer is staffed and served at the precise intersection of the policy network that wrote the framework it is designed to satisfy. In an industry where our own reporting has documented the crypto sector supplying more than a third of all corporate election money this cycle, that adjacency is part of the strategic picture, not a curiosity.
Distribution has been assembled in parallel: availability across major exchanges from day one, a payments integration with a commerce platform announced in February, and, in the chief executive’s framing, a stated ambition that Tether could become one of the largest buyers of US Treasury bills as demand for its dollar tokens grows.
The disclosure inversion The most revealing detail in the entire structure is one almost nobody has commented on, and it runs opposite to what anyone would predict.
USAT, at $141 million, publishes reserve reports signed by Deloitte. USDT, at $184 billion, has operated for its entire existence on attestations rather than a full audit, a gap this publication has documented repeatedly and which S&P cited when it downgraded the token to the weakest grade on its stablecoin scale in December, alongside the rising share of higher-risk assets in the reserves. The small token has the stronger disclosure regime. The enormous one does not.
That inversion is not an accident; it is the whole design. USAT exists inside the federal framework, which imposes reserve composition, custody, and reporting requirements, and satisfying them is the token’s entire purpose. USDT operates outside that framework by choice and by history, with reserves that, as reported at USAT’s launch, do not currently align with the statute’s standards, while the company describes itself as progressing toward compliance. The group therefore runs two dollar tokens with opposite regulatory postures: one built to the American rulebook and audited to it, one built for global liquidity and disclosed on its own terms.
For anyone assessing Tether, this is the most useful lens available. The twin is proof that the group can meet the standard when it chooses to, on a token small enough that meeting the standard costs almost nothing. Whether the $184 billion business ever moves onto that footing is a different question, involving reserve composition changes at a scale that would reshape the company’s economics, and nothing in USAT’s existence answers it.
What the twin is actually for Three readings compete, and the honest answer is that all three are partly right.
The product reading takes the growth at face value: institutions want a regulated dollar token from an issuer with unmatched global distribution, USAT supplies it, and 540% in a month is what early product-market fit looks like. Its supporters can point to a real gap in the market, since the regulated field is dominated by one incumbent and the alternatives are small, and to Tether’s distribution as an advantage no startup can match.
The option reading treats USAT as insurance. If American regulation eventually forces offshore dollar tokens out of US-facing channels, or if institutional counterparties increasingly require a federally issued instrument, the group already holds a functioning, chartered, audited vehicle it can scale instead of building under pressure. The cost of maintaining that option is trivial against $1.04 billion in quarterly profit, and the value if the perimeter tightens is enormous. On this reading the size is the point: an option does not need to be large until it is exercised.
The hedge reading is the least flattering and the hardest to dismiss. A company earning float income on $184 billion of offshore liabilities faces exactly one existential risk, which is that the regulatory environment turns against the structure generating those liabilities. A compliant American subsidiary, staffed by the people who wrote the rules and served by a firm with the deepest ties to the administration, is a hedge against that risk purchased in the most direct way available. Nothing about it is improper. It is simply what a rational company with Tether’s exposure would build.
The three readings imply different things to watch, and they are separable in the data. A product would keep compounding across a broad institutional user base. An option would plateau at a level sufficient to keep the machinery live. A hedge would scale only when the perimeter moved. The next two quarterly reserve reports will begin to distinguish them, which makes USAT’s supply curve one of the more informative small numbers in stablecoins.
The field the twin entered USAT’s numbers only mean something against the market it is competing in, and that market changed shape considerably in the eighteen months before it launched.
The regulated American dollar-token field is dominated by one incumbent and populated by a widening set of challengers with different theories. Circle’s USDC, at roughly $75 billion, holds around a quarter of all stablecoin supply and has spent years building exactly the compliance-first, publicly listed profile that the federal framework rewards, which is why its leadership has argued the legislation makes it a primary beneficiary. PayPal’s PYUSD, near $5.5 billion, represents the consumer-platform theory: distribution through an existing payments network with hundreds of millions of accounts. Ripple’s RLUSD, around $1.7 billion, is the institutional-settlement theory, aimed at treasury and cross-border flows and, as this publication has documented, increasingly embedded in that company’s own product stack. Bank consortium tokens and fintech issuers occupy the remainder.
USAT entered against all of them with a distinct pitch: the compliance profile of a chartered bank issuer combined with the distribution of the world’s most widely held stablecoin. That combination is genuinely unmatched on paper, since no competitor has both a national bank issuing its token and a sibling instrument used by hundreds of millions of people in emerging markets. It is also, so far, mostly potential. Distribution is not transferable by announcement; the users who hold USDT hold it for reasons, principally dollar access in markets where dollars are hard to obtain, that have nothing to do with American regulatory compliance and are not served by a token designed for US institutional treasury operations. The two customer bases barely overlap, which is why the parent’s global scale does not automatically become the twin’s American scale, and why the growth that matters is the institutional adoption the US entity’s chief executive describes rather than any migration from the existing user base.
That reframes the competitive question usefully. USAT is not competing for USDT’s users. It is competing with USDC, PYUSD, and RLUSD for American institutional balances, in a market where the incumbent has a five-hundred-fold size advantage, a public listing, years of relationships, and a compliance record predating the statute. Against that, $141 million after six months is neither the failure the absolute number suggests nor the triumph the percentage implies. It is an entrant with an unusual parent, roughly where a well-funded entrant would be, in a market that has not yet decided how many regulated dollar tokens it actually needs.
What to watch The May and June reserve reports. One 540% month off a $22 million base proves little. Whether growth compounded through the second quarter, or April was a single institutional allocation, is the difference between the product reading and the option reading, and the Deloitte-signed reports will show it plainly.
USDT’s own compliance path. Any concrete move to bring the $184 billion token’s reserves into alignment with the federal standard would change everything about this structure, because it would make the twin redundant. Silence is equally informative.
The parent’s contraction. USDT shedding roughly $6 billion in sixty days is a far larger phenomenon than USAT’s entire existence, and whether that reflects market-wide stablecoin contraction, competitive loss, or regulatory friction determines how urgent the American vehicle becomes.
The Treasury claim. The stated ambition of becoming a top-ten buyer of US government debt is checkable against public data as it develops, and it is the clearest available test of whether the group’s American strategy is operational or aspirational.
A closing note on what the twin reveals about the parent, because that is ultimately the more consequential subject. Tether’s global business is built on a structure that American law is steadily making harder to operate from outside: an offshore issuer, reserves disclosed on the company’s own terms, a token used by hundreds of millions of people for reasons no regulator designed. Every element of that structure has been a competitive advantage for a decade, and every element is now a liability inside a jurisdiction writing rules for regulated dollars. The company’s response has been neither to restructure the parent nor to abandon the market, but to build a small, clean, fully compliant version of itself and let it grow on its own timetable while the large version continues as it is.
That is a genuinely sophisticated answer to a hard problem, and it has one obvious failure mode. Options expire. If the American perimeter tightens faster than USAT scales, the group holds a compliant vehicle a thousand times too small to absorb the business that would need to migrate into it, and building capacity under regulatory pressure is the most expensive way to build anything. If the perimeter never tightens, the twin remains a modest business inside a company earning billions elsewhere, which costs almost nothing. Between those poles sits the actual question worth watching over the next year, and the reserve reports will answer it faster than any announcement.
Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Supply figures, reserve reports, and market data reflect information available at the time of writing and change continuously. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of July 27, 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions What is USAT? Tether’s US-regulated dollar stablecoin, launched January 27, 2026 and designed to operate within the federal stablecoin framework. It is issued by Anchorage Digital Bank, a nationally chartered bank, with Cantor Fitzgerald as designated reserve custodian and preferred primary dealer, and is run by a separate US entity led by Bo Hines, formerly executive director of the White House Council of Advisers on Digital Assets.
How large is USAT now? Roughly $141 million. Circulating supply was $17.6 million at the end of January, about $22 million in March, and $140.8 million as of April 30 per a Deloitte-signed reserve report, representing 540% growth in a single month. In context, that is approximately 0.08% of USDT’s circulation, about 8% of Ripple’s RLUSD, 2.5% of PayPal’s PYUSD, and under 0.2% of Circle’s USDC.
Why does Tether need a second dollar token? Because USDT’s reserves do not currently align with the federal stablecoin statute’s requirements, while the company describes itself as progressing toward compliance. USAT is purpose-built to satisfy that framework through a chartered bank issuer, giving the group a compliant American instrument without restructuring the reserves behind its $184 billion global token.
Why does the smaller token have better disclosure? Because the federal framework requires it. USAT publishes Deloitte-signed reserve reports as a condition of operating inside the American regime, while USDT has historically operated on attestations rather than full audits, a gap S&P cited when downgrading the token to the weakest grade on its stablecoin stability scale in December. The inversion is a design consequence, not an oversight.
Is USAT growing or stalling? Both, depending on the frame. Its growth rate is the fastest among regulated dollar tokens this year, but from a base so small that the percentage flatters it, and it remains the smallest meaningful entrant in the US institutional market. Whether April’s jump was the start of compounding adoption or a single large allocation should become clear in subsequent reserve reports.
What is happening to USDT itself? It is contracting. Circulation peaked near $190 billion in May and stood at approximately $184.1 billion on July 21, a decline of roughly $6 billion in sixty days, against a broader stablecoin market that shed about $10 billion from its May high. Tether reported $1.04 billion in first-quarter profit and a reserve buffer above token obligations of roughly $8.2 billion.
Who runs USAT, and why does that matter? Bo Hines, previously the executive director of the White House crypto council, leads the US entity, and Cantor Fitzgerald, whose former chief executive is the sitting Commerce Secretary, custodies the reserves. Nothing about the arrangement is improper and both facts were public at launch, but the compliance vehicle for the largest offshore issuer being staffed and served at the center of the policy network that wrote the framework is a material part of the strategic picture.
What should observers actually watch? The next two reserve reports, since compounding growth, a plateau, or a reversal distinguishes a product from an option from a hedge; any concrete step toward bringing USDT’s own reserves into federal alignment, which would make the twin redundant; and the trajectory of the parent’s contraction, which determines how urgently the American vehicle is needed. This is educational analysis, not investment advice.
Tetherův XAUT získal certifikaci šaríjské shody od společnosti Amanah Advisors. Certifikace potvrzuje krytí fyzickým zlatem a soulad s principy islámského financování.
Tether’s XAUT gold-backed token has been certified as Shariah compliant by Amanah Advisors, marking a step toward connecting tokenized real-world assets with Islamic finance markets, according to a Monday statement.
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The certification recognizes that XAUT is backed by physical gold ownership and avoids structures prohibited under Islamic finance, including riba, leverage and speculative derivatives.
“Gold has always represented stability and trust across cultures and generations,” Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino stated. “With XAUT now recognized as Shariah compliant, we are expanding access to digital gold in a way that respects Islamic finance principles while leveraging the transparency and efficiency of blockchain technology.”
Tether said the certification could help expand access to digital gold across regions with growing Islamic finance activity, including GCC countries, South Asia and parts of Africa. Amanah Advisors will continue supporting governance frameworks for wider Shariah-compliant adoption of XAUT.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Tether drží 97,141 BTC, zhruba za 6 miliard USD, a bez veřejně obchodované ceny akcií na něj nelze spočítat tržní mNAV. Akumulaci financuje z provozních zisků, ne z emise akcií.
Tether holds 97,141 bitcoin, enough to rank second among corporate holders if it were listed anywhere. It is not. There is no share, so there is no multiple, no premium, no discount, and no market referee on the largest private Bitcoin position in existence, funded by a business that earns more per employee than any company on earth.
Summary
Tether holds 97,141 BTC, worth roughly $6 billion at current prices, accumulated under a 2023 policy of allocating up to 15% of realized quarterly operating profits to Bitcoin, most recently an 8,888 BTC transfer on New Year’s Day. If Tether were public, ranking services place it second among corporate holders behind Strategy’s 672,497 BTC. It is private, so every metric built to value Bitcoin treasuries, mNAV above all, simply does not compute. The funding model inverts the treasury-company template: Strategy and its imitators raise capital to buy Bitcoin, while Tether buys with retained profits from a reserve business that reported over $10 billion in net income for 2025. Bitcoin is one leg of a diversified reserve: roughly 116 metric tons of gold worth more than $17 billion, around $135 billion in US Treasuries by the issuer’s account, against approximately $185 billion of USDT in circulation. The same diversification cuts both ways: S&P downgraded USDT to its lowest stablecoin rating in December, citing disclosure gaps and a rising share of high-risk assets, meaning the accumulation that makes Tether a Bitcoin power is what a rating agency counts against it. Every large corporate Bitcoin position in the world has a price attached to it, and not the price of the coins. Strategy has an mNAV. So does every listed treasury company, tracked in real time across a hundred names by analytics platforms that publish thirty metrics apiece: enterprise value over Bitcoin net asset value, premium or discount, diluted variants, debt-adjusted variants, the entire apparatus a market builds when it needs to decide what a pile of Bitcoin inside a corporate wrapper is worth. That apparatus has one conspicuous blind spot, and it happens to contain the second-largest corporate stack on earth. Tether holds 97,141 BTC, roughly $6 billion at current prices, accumulated quarter after quarter since 2023 under a policy of committing up to 15% of realized operating profits to the asset. Ranking services note that if Tether were a public company it would sit second behind Strategy, and then they file it on a separate page for private companies, holdings listed, valuation column blank, because there is no share, no float, no enterprise value, and therefore no multiple to compute. The most-watched metric in corporate Bitcoin cannot be applied to one of corporate Bitcoin’s largest holders. This piece is about that gap: what Tether actually holds, how the accumulation is funded, why the absence of a market price is more consequential than it sounds, and what a rating agency sees when it looks at the same balance sheet.
The position, itemized Start with the stack and the pattern, because the pattern is more informative than any single figure.
The current disclosed holding is 97,141 BTC. The most recent visible additions trace a consistent rhythm: an 8,888.8 BTC transfer to the treasury wallet on January 1, worth roughly $778 million at the time and described by the chief executive as the Q4 2025 profit allocation, taking holdings above 96,000, followed by a smaller addition in April that brought the total to its present level. The policy behind the rhythm dates to May 2023: up to 15% of realized quarterly operating profits committed to Bitcoin, executed as periodic purchases and consolidated near quarter-end, a mechanical program, not a discretionary trade.
Bitcoin is one leg of a three-legged reserve strategy, and the other two are larger. Gold: roughly 116 metric tons as of the third quarter of 2025, valued above $17 billion by early this year, a position that makes Tether one of the largest private gold holders in existence. US government debt: approximately $135 billion by the chief executive’s own framing, which he described as positioning the company as the seventeenth-largest holder of US debt, with later reporting citing exposure figures around $141 billion. Against those reserves sits roughly $185 billion of USDT in circulation, and around the whole structure, per its Q3 2025 attestation, approximately $184.5 billion in stablecoin reserves against $215 billion in total assets, with roughly $23 billion in retained earnings and about $30 billion in group equity.
The scale comparison worth holding onto: Strategy’s 672,497 BTC is nearly seven times Tether’s stack, built with more than $50 billion of raised capital at an average cost around $75,000 per coin, and it constitutes that company’s entire reason for existing. Tether’s 97,141 BTC is a side position, roughly 3% of its total assets, accumulated from spare profit by a company whose actual business is something else entirely. That difference in kind, not the difference in size, is what makes the valuation problem interesting.
The machine that funds it The accumulation model is the inverse of the sector it is usually grouped with, and the inversion explains why Tether can keep buying when the treasury companies cannot.
The digital asset treasury template, which this publication has covered from Strategy’s flywheel through the newer entrants, runs on capital markets. A company issues equity or convertible debt, buys Bitcoin with the proceeds, and depends on trading above its net asset value so that each issuance is accretive rather than dilutive. When the premium compresses, as it has across the sector this year, the machine stalls: raising becomes value-destroying, purchases stop, and the equity story unwinds. It is a leveraged bet on both Bitcoin and continued market enthusiasm for the wrapper.
Tether buys with cash it already earned. The reserve business generates income by holding predominantly short-term US government debt against tokens the public holds without interest, which produced more than $10 billion in net profit for 2025 and, on the company’s own account, roughly $500 million a month from Treasury holdings alone at one point last year. Fifteen percent of realized profits into Bitcoin is an allocation decision made after the money is in the door. No premium is required, no issuance, no market permission. The purchases continue at $63,000 exactly as they continued at $100,000, because the input is profit, not sentiment, which is why Tether kept accumulating through a drawdown that stopped much of the treasury-company sector cold.
That funding structure also makes Tether the clearest single illustration of stablecoin economics that this publication’s stablechain coverage has traced from the other direction. The float pays for everything: the Bitcoin, the gold, the chain investments, the venture portfolio, and the free-transfer subsidies underwriting the purpose-built USDT networks. A business that earns on other people’s dollar balances converts monetary demand into a balance sheet, and the Bitcoin position is simply the most visible artifact of that conversion.
The metric that cannot be computed Now the gap, which is the piece’s actual subject.
For public treasury companies, mNAV is the governing number. It divides enterprise value, market capitalization plus debt and preferred equity, by the market value of the Bitcoin held. Above 1.0 means the market pays a premium for the wrapper, its strategy, its access to capital, its operating business. Below 1.0 means the market discounts even the coins. Analytics platforms track it across more than a hundred companies with real-time variants for dilution and capital structure, and the ratio has become the sector’s price-to-earnings equivalent, the number that decides whether a treasury company can raise, whether it should buy back, and whether its strategy is working.
Apply that to Tether and every input goes missing. There is no market capitalization, because there is no traded share. There is no enterprise value, because there is no market to compute it. There is no premium or discount, because nobody is bidding for a claim. The company has moved toward the edges of price discovery, a share buyback program was initiated last autumn and reporting has described interest from major investors in a private placement raising up to $20 billion, which would imply a valuation, but a negotiated private round is not a market price. It is one number agreed by a few parties under confidentiality, revealed selectively, and untested by anyone who might disagree.
The consequences are more than academic, and they run in both directions. Nobody can express a view: an investor who believes Tether’s Bitcoin is worth more than the market credits, or that the whole structure is worth less than claimed, has no instrument to trade. Nobody can be corrected: without a price, the company’s own attestations, disclosures, and framings are the primary information, and there is no continuously updated second opinion of the kind a share price provides. And nothing is disciplined: public treasury companies discovered this year that a compressing mNAV forces strategy changes, halted purchases, buybacks, defensive disclosure, because the market votes daily. Tether faces no such vote. The largest private Bitcoin position on earth is, in the most literal sense, unmarked, and the only external referees are the attestation firms and the rating agencies, which is where the story turns uncomfortable.
Tether extends Bitcoin bet with 8,888 $BTC Q4 purchase above $96k
— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) January 1, 2026 What the rating agency sees S&P Global looked at the same balance sheet in December and reached a conclusion the accumulation narrative rarely mentions: it downgraded USDT to 5, the weakest grade on its five-point stablecoin stability scale, citing persistent gaps in disclosure and a rising share of high-risk assets in the reserves. The high-risk assets named include Bitcoin, gold, corporate bonds, and secured loans.
Sit with the symmetry, because it is the sharpest fact in this piece. Every headline celebrating Tether as a top-tier Bitcoin holder is describing, in the rating agency’s framework, the growth of the reserve component least suitable for backing a dollar-pegged liability. Both readings follow from the same asset. The company’s case, argued publicly by its chief executive against the downgrade, is that excess reserves and group equity absorb the volatility: roughly $7 billion in excess reserves and about $30 billion in group equity stand between a Bitcoin drawdown and the tokens, meaning the volatile assets are funded by capital rather than by the money backing USDT. That is a real argument and, on the disclosed figures, a substantially cushioned position.
The counter is equally real. The cushion is disclosed by the company and verified by attestation rather than by audit, a distinction this industry has debated for a decade; a Bitcoin drawdown of the severity Bitcoin has repeatedly produced would consume a large share of the stated excess in a single quarter; and the correlation problem is the one nobody models publicly, since the conditions that would trigger mass USDT redemption are precisely the conditions in which Bitcoin and gold would be falling and least convenient to sell. A reserve that is diversified in normal times can be concentrated in the only scenario that matters. That is not a prediction of failure. It is the reason a rating agency’s job exists, and the reason the missing market price matters: for a public company, a market would price that tail risk continuously and visibly. Here, one agency’s letter grade and the issuer’s rebuttal are the entire public debate.
What would make it pricable Three developments would convert this position from an unmarked holding into a valued one, and each is at least plausible.
A completed private placement at scale, the reported raise of up to $20 billion with institutional participation, would produce a negotiated valuation for the whole enterprise. It would not be a market price, but it would be the first external number against which the Bitcoin, gold, and Treasury legs could be measured, and it would create shareholders with an interest in eventual liquidity.
Regulatory convergence is the second. The US stablecoin framework and its implementation, covered across this publication’s regulatory reporting, is steadily raising the disclosure floor for issuers serving American users, and Tether’s domestic-market vehicle brings part of the group inside that perimeter. Disclosure requirements are how private balance sheets become legible, and legibility is the precondition for valuation.
And a listing, the possibility every private financial company of this scale eventually faces, would resolve everything at once: a share price, an enterprise value, and finally an mNAV for the second-largest corporate Bitcoin holder in the world. There is no indication one is planned. But the buyback program, the private placement discussions, and the group-equity disclosures are the standard sequence of a company assembling the furniture a valuation event requires.
Until one of those lands, the situation stands as described: 97,141 bitcoin, roughly $6 billion, inside a company earning more than $10 billion a year, sitting on a spreadsheet somewhere with no multiple attached, in a sector that has built an entire analytical apparatus for exactly this question and cannot point it at the biggest private target in the field.
What to watch The quarterly transfer. The 15% allocation makes each quarter’s profit-driven purchase a schedule, and the size of each transfer is a live read on the reserve business’s profitability, one of the few genuinely informative numbers a private issuer emits.
The next attestation. Excess reserves and group equity are the cushion the entire high-risk-asset debate turns on. Watch whether both grow with the Bitcoin position or lag it, since the ratio between them is the honest version of the risk question.
Any rating movement. S&P’s grade is the closest thing to an external referee. An upgrade on improved disclosure, or a further downgrade, moves the only public scorecard that exists.
The raise. Confirmation, size, and valuation of the reported private placement would supply the first external number for the enterprise, and with it the first opportunity to ask what the market thinks all that Bitcoin is worth inside this particular wrapper.
One final calibration, because Tether is not quite alone in this category and the comparison sharpens the point. Ranking services list at least one private entity with a larger claimed Bitcoin position, a technology company whose holdings, unlike Tether’s, cannot be verified on-chain at all, which produces a three-tier structure of corporate Bitcoin knowledge worth naming. Public companies disclose in filings and are priced continuously by markets. Tether discloses in attestations and is verifiable on-chain but priced by nobody. And a third tier claims holdings that are neither audited nor observable, existing purely as assertion. The industry’s data infrastructure, the trackers, the leaderboards, the dashboards with thirty metrics per company, handles the first tier well and quietly degrades across the other two, which means every statement about how much Bitcoin corporations own carries an error bar that grows as you move away from the listed names. That is worth remembering the next time a leaderboard is cited as though all its rows were equivalent evidence. Tether’s row is unusually good by the standards of private disclosure, on-chain verifiable, regularly attested, publicly discussed by its chief executive, and it still lacks the single thing that makes a corporate holding legible to markets: someone, somewhere, willing to state a price and be wrong about it in public.
Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Holdings, reserve figures, and profit numbers reflect company statements, attestations, and third-party reporting that cannot be independently verified against audited financials, and asset values change continuously. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of July 26, 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions How much Bitcoin does Tether hold? 97,141 BTC, worth roughly $6 billion at current prices. The position was built under a policy adopted in May 2023 of allocating up to 15% of realized quarterly operating profits to Bitcoin, with recent additions including 8,888.8 BTC transferred on January 1 as the Q4 2025 allocation and a smaller purchase in April.
Where does that rank among corporate holders? Second, if it counted. Ranking services note Tether would sit behind only Strategy’s 672,497 BTC if it were a public company, but list it separately because it is private. Strategy’s position is nearly seven times larger and constitutes that company’s entire business model, while Tether’s is roughly 3% of total assets.
How is Tether’s accumulation different from a treasury company’s? Funding. Treasury companies raise equity or convertible debt to buy Bitcoin and depend on trading above net asset value for issuance to be accretive, so purchases stall when the premium compresses. Tether buys with retained profits from its reserve business, which reported more than $10 billion in net income for 2025, so its purchases continue regardless of market sentiment toward any wrapper.
What is mNAV and why can it not be applied to Tether? mNAV divides a company’s enterprise value by the market value of its Bitcoin, showing whether investors pay a premium or discount for the wrapper. It requires a traded share price, which Tether does not have. With no market capitalization, no enterprise value, and no float, every input is missing, so the sector’s governing metric simply does not compute for one of its largest holders.
Why does the absence of a market price matter? Because a price is a continuous external opinion. Without one, no investor can express a view on whether Tether is over- or undervalued, no daily second opinion checks the company’s own disclosures, and no market discipline forces strategy changes the way a compressing mNAV has forced them across the public treasury sector this year. Attestations and rating agencies are the only external referees.
What else is in Tether’s reserves? Predominantly US government debt, around $135 billion by the company’s own account, described by its chief executive as making Tether the seventeenth-largest holder of US debt, plus roughly 116 metric tons of gold valued above $17 billion, against approximately $185 billion of USDT in circulation. Bitcoin is the smallest of the three headline legs.
Why did S&P downgrade USDT if the reserves are diversified? S&P cut USDT to 5, the weakest grade on its stablecoin scale, in December, citing persistent disclosure gaps and a rising share of high-risk assets including Bitcoin, gold, corporate bonds, and secured loans. The agency’s framework treats volatile assets backing a dollar-pegged liability as a risk, so the same accumulation celebrated as treasury strength counts against the stability rating. Tether’s response points to roughly $7 billion in excess reserves and about $30 billion in group equity as the buffer.
Could Tether ever be valued publicly? Possibly, through three routes: the reported private placement of up to $20 billion, which would produce a negotiated enterprise valuation; regulatory convergence raising disclosure requirements as US stablecoin rules are implemented; or an eventual listing, which would supply a share price and, finally, an mNAV. None is confirmed, though a share buyback program and private-placement discussions are the customary preliminaries. This is educational analysis, not investment advice.
Tether financuje dvě konkurenční sítě, Plasma a Stable, aby omezil únik poplatků za USDT na cizí blockchainy. Cílí hlavně na Tron, který drží zhruba 45 % všech USDT.
The world’s largest stablecoin issuer pays roughly $2.9 billion a year in fees to blockchains it does not control. Its answer was to back two competing chains at once: Plasma, the $373 million DeFi-flavored bet, and Stable, the enterprise rail where USDT is the gas. One issuer, two armies, one enemy named Tron, and a strategy that makes sense only when you see whose problem it solves.
Summary
Tether’s ecosystem has seeded two purpose-built USDT chains that compete directly with each other: Plasma, live since September with a $373 million token sale, a paymaster model, and roughly $551 million in DeFi TVL, and Stable, live since December with $2 billion in pre-deposits, USDT-as-gas, and an enterprise focus. The motive is a number: analyses put Tether’s annual network-fee bill near $2.9 billion, split largely between Ethereum and Tron, value that leaks to base layers the issuer does not control while its own revenue runs near $5 billion. The two chains embody opposite design philosophies, a subsidized general-purpose DeFi economy with a native token doing traditional work, versus a stripped payments rail where the dollar itself is the fuel, and opposite go-to-market strategies. The real target is not each other but Tron, which still carries roughly 45% of all USDT and earns the fees on the world’s largest remittance flows, a moat neither challenger has meaningfully dented. Funding both sides is not indecision; it is a portfolio: the issuer wins if either chain repatriates the fee leak, wins bigger if both segment the market, and loses only to the status quo it is paying $2.9 billion a year to escape. Companies do not usually finance both armies in a war, but then no company has ever been positioned quite like Tether. The issuer of USDT sits atop the most profitable simple business in finance, collecting Treasury yield on the reserves behind roughly $150 billion of circulating dollars, and it watches, every day, a substantial slice of its ecosystem’s economics leak sideways: the fees users pay to move USDT accrue not to Tether but to the blockchains USDT lives on, a bill that research houses have tallied near $2.9 billion a year, flowing mostly to Ethereum validators and, above all, to Tron, the chain that quietly became the developing world’s dollar-remittance backbone.
Tether’s response, characteristically, was not one bet but two. Plasma, backed by Tether-adjacent capital and Founders Fund, raised $373 million in an oversubscribed sale and launched in September as a general-purpose stablecoin chain with a native token, a paymaster that makes USDT transfers free, and a DeFi ecosystem that onboarded Aave, Ethena, and Euler on day one. Stable, backed by Bitfinex with Tether’s chief executive advising, drew $2 billion in pre-deposits and launched in December as something sparer: a chain where USDT itself is the gas, transfers are free by protocol rule, and the pitch is enterprise blockspace rather than yield farming.
Bitfinex-backed layer 1 Stable releases tokenomics, mainnet to go live on Dec. 8
Stable shares tokenomics details ahead of its Dec. 8 mainnet launch, with a total supply of 100B tokens distributed among ecosystem, team, investors and advisors.
— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) December 3, 2025 Two chains, one family, the same target market, and a rivalry the ecosystem politely declines to name. This piece names it, maps the two designs honestly, and answers the question the arrangement raises: why an issuer would fund its own chain war, and what winning even means when you own both sides.
The fee leak: the war’s actual cause Start with the number that explains everything, because without it the two-chain strategy looks like a waste and with it the strategy looks obvious.
USDT’s success created a strange corporate geometry: the asset is Tether’s, the activity is enormous, and the toll booths belong to other people. Every USDT transfer on Ethereum pays gas to Ethereum validators; every transfer on Tron, where nearly half of all USDT lives and where the remittance corridors of Asia, Africa, and Latin America actually run, pays energy and bandwidth costs into Tron’s economy.
Aggregated, analyses of Tether’s ecosystem have put the annual network-fee spend associated with USDT movement at roughly $2.9 billion, against issuer revenues that industry estimates placed near $4.9 billion in the same period, meaning the base layers underneath USDT capture value at a scale approaching the issuer’s own take.
Delphi Digital’s framing of the problem is the cleanest: as issuance spread across chains, the infrastructure supporting USDT ended up largely outside Tether’s control, and the economic value generated by usage is disproportionately captured by the rails, especially Ethereum and Tron.
For most companies this would be an irritation. For a stablecoin issuer, it is a strategic vulnerability with three faces. Economically, it is margin leaking to landlords. Competitively, it funds a chain, Tron, whose operator is an independent actor with his own token, his own politics, and his own regulatory exposures, none of which Tether chooses. And architecturally, it means the user experience of the world’s most used digital dollar, fees, congestion, gas-token requirements, is set by networks optimizing for other things.
The purpose-built USDT chain is the answer to all three at once: repatriate the fees, own the rail, and design the experience around the dollar. The only question was which design, and Tether’s ecosystem answered: both.
Two chains, two philosophies The rivals are best understood as opposite answers to one question: how much chain does a stablecoin need?
Plasma’s answer is: a whole one. It is a full EVM Layer 1 with its own token, XPL, doing the traditional native-token jobs, validator staking, settlement asset, and value accrual through the chain’s growth, while a paymaster contract absorbs gas costs so that simple USDT transfers cost users nothing. The design keeps the familiar crypto economy intact: XPL had a $373 million public sale seven times oversubscribed, the chain launched with more than a hundred DeFi integrations, TVL has built to roughly $551 million, sub-second PlasmaBFT finality serves trading as well as payments, Bitcoin anchoring adds a security narrative, and a confidential-transfers module courts payroll and B2B flows.
Plasma is, in short, a general-purpose chain that subsidizes its stablecoin lane, betting that free USDT transfers pull in users whose other activity, lending, trading, yield, pays the bills and accrues to the token. The paymaster’s economics depend on exactly the patron logic this publication’s gasless-transfers guide dissects: most zero-fee chains in history died when the subsidy ran out, and Plasma’s differentiating claim is that its subsidy is underwritten by an ecosystem with a direct commercial interest in USDT ubiquity.
Stable’s answer is: as little chain as possible. No paymaster indirection, no separate gas asset at all: USDT0, the omnichain dollar, is the fee token; simple transfers are exempt by protocol rule, and the native STABLE token is confined to staking and governance, deliberately invisible to users, the architecture this publication’s companion guides map in detail.
Where Plasma courted DeFi, Stable ships enterprise blockspace, dedicated capacity for institutional payment flows, and its traction metric was not TVL but the $2 billion in pre-deposits that arrived before mainnet. The design concedes the DeFi economy to others and optimizes one thing: dollar movement at payments-grade predictability, on the bet that remittance processors, merchants, and treasuries choose rails the way they choose clearing banks: for boredom, not composability.
The philosophies produce different vulnerabilities, and honesty requires both. Plasma’s risk is dilution of purpose: a general-purpose chain competing for DeFi against Ethereum, Solana, and every L2, where free USDT transfers are a loss leader for an economy that may never outgrow its subsidy, and where the XPL token must justify itself against exactly the value-accrual skepticism this publication applies everywhere.
Stable’s risk is the mirror: a rail so minimal that its moat is only execution and alignment, with no ecosystem gravity to retain users who arrive, and a token whose value case, as our STABLE guide argues, waits on governance decisions nobody has made. One chain risks being too much; the other risks being too little; and both share the risk that actually matters, which lives in Asia, on the incumbent.
Tron: the enemy both were built to fight The polite framing says Plasma and Stable address different segments. The impolite truth is that both exist to take the same prize: the roughly 45% of all USDT that lives on Tron and the fee flows it generates.
Tron’s dominance is the most underexamined fact in stablecoin land. It hosts the largest share of the largest stablecoin, it carries the remittance and exchange-settlement flows of the markets where USDT is not a trading chip but a savings technology, and its moat is precisely the kind that whitepapers cannot breach: cash-network effects, integrations in thousands of local exchanges and OTC desks, muscle memory in a hundred million wallets, and fees that, while meaningfully nonzero, are known, tolerated, and priced into every corridor.
Both challengers aim at it explicitly, Plasma’s remittance-routing pitch is skip Tron’s TRX gas requirement, Stable’s free-transfer pitch is the same sentence with different plumbing, and both discovered what challengers of payment incumbents always discover: users do not migrate for architecture, they migrate when their exchange, their employer, or their remittance app migrates, which makes the war a business-development grind, not a technology contest.
The scoreboard that matters is therefore not TVL or transaction counts, both inflatable, but the share of USDT supply resident on each chain, and by that measure the war has barely begun: Tron’s share has eroded only at the edges, the challengers’ combined float remains a fraction of it, and the incumbent retains the advantage every toll-road owner has, profitability that funds its own retention incentives.
Which is exactly why the two-chain strategy makes sense from the issuer’s chair, and this is the piece’s resolving move. Tether does not need to pick the winning design; it needs the fee leak plugged and the rail owned by family, and funding two philosophies is how a portfolio manager attacks an uncertain market: Plasma tests whether a subsidized DeFi economy can bootstrap payments gravity, Stable tests whether enterprise minimalism can, the two chains’ competition sharpens both faster than monopoly would, and every dollar of USDT float either one wins from Tron or Ethereum converts leaked fees into family economics.
If both succeed, the market segments, retail-and-DeFi on one, institutional on the other, and the issuer owns the whole stack. If one dies, the survivor inherits its lessons and its float. The only losing scenario is the status quo, and the status quo is the thing costing $2.9 billion a year.
Wars are usually negative-sum for the combatants and profitable for the arms dealer; this one was designed by the arms dealer, which is the fact to keep in view as the ecosystem spends the next year pretending the two chains are not aimed at each other, and at Tron, and, quietly, at the $2.9 billion.
The regulatory shadow both chains share One more force shapes the war from outside it, and the family’s own coverage of Washington makes it unavoidable: both chains are Tether-ecosystem infrastructure launching into the exact regulatory window in which American law is deciding what offshore-issued dollars may do.
The GENIUS Act’s stablecoin framework, whose missed implementation deadlines this publication has chronicled, and the CLARITY Act’s market-structure fight, live on the Senate floor this very week, together draw the perimeter that will define both chains’ addressable markets. The core exposure is identical for both: USDT remains an offshore-issued dollar under frameworks built to privilege domestically regulated issuance, and every corridor the chains win converts informal USDT usage into visible, systematic flows that regulators can see, name, and gate.
The chains’ opposite strategies produce opposite versions of the exposure. Stable’s enterprise pitch runs toward the regulated world on purpose, courting institutions whose compliance departments must bless the rail, which makes it the family’s test of whether Tether-aligned infrastructure can pass American diligence at all. Plasma’s retail-and-DeFi economy runs away from that scrutiny by construction, thriving in exactly the permissionless corridors that the illicit-finance provisions of every pending bill target.
One chain bets the family can join the regulated system; the other bets it can outgrow the need to; and the legislation moving through Congress this month will grade both bets before either chain’s technology does. The honest summary for the cluster this piece opens: the fee-leak war is the family’s offensive campaign, and the regulatory perimeter is its defensive one, and the second war, unlike the first, is not one the issuer designed.
The third bidder nobody prices One actor complicates the family war’s tidy geometry, and the honest map includes it: the incumbent chains are not standing still, and the war’s most likely spoiler is not either challenger failing but the leak becoming cheaper to tolerate.
Tron’s defense is already visible in its pricing behavior: the network has periodically tuned its resource model when migration pressure rises, and its operator retains the toll-road owner’s ultimate weapon, the ability to cut fees toward zero in the corridors under attack while keeping them positive everywhere else, a price-discrimination play incumbents from airlines to telecoms have run against cherry-picking entrants forever. Every basis point Tron shaves narrows the challengers’ pitch, and Tron can shave from profits while the challengers subsidize from war chests, an asymmetry that favors the incumbent in any prolonged price war.
Ethereum’s defense is structural: the institutional and DeFi USDT that lives there is the stickiest float in the ecosystem, held for composability with the deepest markets in crypto, and no payments-optimized rail competes for it at all, which is why the realistic battlefield is Tron’s remittance float, not Ethereum’s collateral float, and why the challengers’ addressable prize is meaningfully smaller than the headline $2.9 billion suggests.
And there is a fourth trajectory the war could take, the one the arms-dealer framing predicts: the leak becoming the product. Tether’s ecosystem does not strictly need either chain to win the migration war if the chains’ existence disciplines the incumbents’ pricing, converts the issuer from rate-taker to rate-negotiator, and hands the family credible exit infrastructure it can invoke in every commercial conversation with Tron.
Leverage, not conquest, may be the strategy’s real deliverable: the $373 million and the $2 billion pre-deposits purchase, at minimum, the ability to move, and the ability to move is what turns a captive tenant into a negotiating one. On this reading, the two chains are already succeeding, quietly, in the only meeting that matters, and the float-share scoreboard understates a war whose first victory is a better lease.
What to watch USDT float by chain, quarterly: The war’s only honest scoreboard: the share of total USDT supply resident on Plasma and Stable versus Tron and Ethereum. Transaction counts inflate; resident float is the fee leak actually moving. Watch whether the challengers’ combined share reaches double digits, and whose share it comes from.
The subsidy postures: Plasma’s paymaster spend against its DeFi economy’s fee generation, and Stable’s emission schedule against its enterprise fee flows: both chains’ free tiers have funding models this publication’s framework can grade, and the first one to show cross-subsidy covering the free lane has found the sustainable shape.
A corridor flip: The event that would actually move the war: a major remittance processor, exchange, or payments app moving a named corridor’s settlement from Tron to either challenger. One real corridor outweighs any TVL milestone, and business-development announcements of that specific shape are the tell.
The issuer’s hand: Canonical USDT issuance decisions, where Tether mints natively versus where USDT0 bridges, are the issuer quietly picking favorites, and any consolidation move, shared infrastructure, a merger, a formal designation of lanes, would be the portfolio manager closing a position. The war ends the way it started: by family decision.
A closing note on the observable that will settle the philosophies faster than any strategy memo: developer behavior. Chains are chosen twice, once by users moving money and once by builders deploying products, and the two chains’ opposite designs make opposite bids for the second constituency. Plasma’s full EVM economy with a hundred day-one DeFi integrations bids for builders with composability and a token to align them; Stable’s enterprise blockspace bids with predictability and a customer base of institutions that pay for boredom.
The early returns are legible in the metrics each side brags about: TVL and integrations on one side, pre-deposits and enterprise partnerships on the other, and the metric each side avoids, and the first year of divergence will show whether payments infrastructure in crypto follows the platform playbook, where ecosystems win, or the utility playbook, where reliability does.
Tron, for what it is worth, won its position with neither: it won with distribution into exchanges and remittance desks before anyone was watching, which is the quiet reminder that the war’s decisive constituency may be neither users nor builders but the few hundred business-development conversations, with processors, exchanges, and payroll providers, that actually move float at scale. Both challengers know it, which is why the war’s real battles will be invisible, fought in integration roadmaps and settlement agreements, and reported, if at all, one corridor at a time.
Frequently Asked Questions What are Plasma and Stable, in one line each? Plasma is a general-purpose stablecoin Layer 1, live since September, with a native token (XPL), a paymaster making simple USDT transfers free, and a DeFi ecosystem around $551 million in TVL. Stable is a payments-focused Layer 1, live since December, where USDT0 itself is the gas asset, simple transfers are free by protocol rule, and the focus is enterprise and institutional flows.
Why does Tether’s ecosystem back both? Because the strategic problem, roughly $2.9 billion a year in USDT-related network fees leaking to chains outside the family, above all Tron and Ethereum, matters more than which design solves it. Backing two opposite philosophies is portfolio logic: each tests a different route to repatriating the fee flow, competition sharpens both, and any float either wins converts leaked economics into aligned economics.
How do the two chains differ technically? Plasma keeps a conventional chain economy: XPL handles staking and settlement, a paymaster subsidizes the free USDT lane, the EVM ecosystem is fully general, and Bitcoin anchoring plus confidential transfers extend the feature set. Stable removes the separate gas asset entirely, USDT0 pays fees, simple transfers are exempt, the STABLE token is confined to staking and governance, and capacity is marketed as enterprise blockspace.
Are they really competitors, or complementary? Directly competitive, whatever the diplomatic framing. Both target the existing USDT float and the same migration sources, Tron’s remittance corridors first, and both pitch the identical headline benefit of free dollar transfers. Segmentation into retail-DeFi versus institutional lanes is a possible equilibrium, but it would be an outcome of the competition, not an alternative to it.
Why is Tron the real target? Tron carries roughly 45% of all USDT, the largest share of the largest stablecoin, concentrated in the remittance and exchange-settlement corridors where USDT functions as everyday money. Its fees are the biggest single component of the ecosystem’s leak, and its moat, integrations, habits, and cash-network effects, is the one both challengers were engineered to attack, so far with only marginal erosion.
What would winning look like for either chain? Resident USDT float, not activity metrics. A challenger reaching a double-digit share of total USDT supply, or flipping a named remittance corridor’s settlement from Tron, would mark real progress. For the issuer’s ecosystem, winning is broader: any combination of outcomes that moves fee flows from external chains to family-aligned ones, including a split decision where both chains hold different segments.
What are the main risks to each? Plasma: the general-purpose trap, competing for DeFi against far larger ecosystems while its free lane depends on subsidy, and an XPL token facing the standard value-accrual skepticism. Stable: the minimalism trap, a rail with no ecosystem gravity, a token whose value case awaits governance decisions, and reliance on enterprise adoption cycles that move slowly. Both: Tron’s incumbency and the possibility that users simply do not migrate.
What does this mean for USDT holders? Little direct risk and some structural benefit: the chains compete to make USDT cheaper and easier to move, and the omnichain plumbing (USDT0) connecting them is the same system this publication’s guides describe, with the same trust stack. The war’s outcome matters more for XPL and STABLE holders, whose tokens are claims on the respective designs winning, and for the fee economics of Tron and Ethereum, the incumbents being challenged. This is educational analysis, not investment advice.
Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Figures for fees, revenues, TVL, and supply shares are estimates drawn from third-party research and change continuously. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of July 24, 2026.
Šéf Swan Bitcoin Cory Klippsten tvrdí, že Tether fakticky kontroluje Twenty One a využívá ji k prosazování svých zájmů v USA. Jack Mallers označil jeho roli za „ceremoniální“ a uvedl, že z funkce CEO odstupuje.
Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten sharply criticized stablecoin giant Tether and Jack Mallers, who recently stepped down as CEO of Twenty One Capital.
Although Klippsten said Tether had "obfuscated it to some degree," he argued that the company effectively controls Twenty One, a publicly traded U.S.-based bitcoin treasury company.
Klippsten also alleged that Twenty One is being used as a vehicle to advance Tether’s interests in the U.S. "It's kind of their U.S. entity for them to do U.S. things and, you know, line pockets where needed for political reasons," he said during an interview on The Starting Block podcast on Thursday.
The Swan Bitcoin CEO didn't offer any evidence to support his claim about Tether using Twenty One for political reasons. Tether didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
USDT, the world’s largest stablecoin, is primarily oriented toward markets outside the United States. Tether restricts most U.S. persons from directly using its platform, although USDT can still circulate through secondary markets. The company has nevertheless been working to expand its American footprint.
Besides launching USAT, a stablecoin designed specifically for the U.S. market, Tether backed the creation of Twenty One, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker XXI.
Twenty One Capital (XXI) stock price chart. Source: The Block/TradingView Last year, Twenty One was created through a SPAC merger with Cantor Equity Partners. It launched with $3.6 billion in bitcoin on its balance sheet, at the time making it the third-largest holder of bitcoin among publicly traded companies. Strike founder Jack Mallers was named CEO of Twenty One.
Mallers exited Twenty One this week as his company Strike also dropped out of a potential merger. Tether Investments, Twenty One's majority shareholder, proposed in April a two-stage merger that would have folded Strike into Twenty One, which would then merge with bitcoin miner Elektron Energy.
"I've decided to step down as CEO of Twenty One," Mallers posted to social media amid his departure. "My life's work remains Bitcoin. My Bitcoin company is Strike. The work continues."
Klippsten characterized Mallers' position at the company as "ceremonial," saying the Strike founder's role was primarily to promote Twenty One's shares.
"He did his job, which was to shill the stock last April, which he did very aggressively," added Klippsten, who also said he doesn't believe it was Mallers' decision to leave Twenty One.
Mallers didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.
Tether podle článku pomohl prosadit americký Genius Act tak, aby zmírnil pravidla pro stablecoiny. Zákon obsahuje tříletou lhůtu a mezeru v regulaci přes zahraniční jurisdikce.
It was billed as cryptocurrency’s big moment, President Donald Trump’s first legislative victory in his drive to make the US the “crypto capital of the world.”
Surrounded by lawmakers and industry executives in the East Room of the White House, Trump signed the Genius Act into law a year ago this month, celebrating it as a step toward bringing digital assets into the mainstream of American finance.
By providing the first set of federal rules for a type of crypto known as stablecoins, the legislation aimed to inspire public confidence in a $300 billion marketplace. It promised protections against fraud by forcing companies to open their books. And it gave Congress a chance to follow through on attempts to address one of crypto’s most longstanding concerns — the persistent use of stablecoins among criminals, terrorists and sanctions evaders — by bringing companies under the watch of US regulators, whether they’re based in the US or not.
But in interviews and a court filing, an inside account of the negotiations surrounding the law has emerged: In the months before and after Trump took office, his advisers Howard Lutnick and Bo Hines worked behind the scenes to loosen those safeguards and shape the law in ways that benefited the world’s dominant stablecoin issuer, Tether. Among Trump’s advisers, Lutnick and Hines played the most formative roles in a legislative process that ultimately included measures favorable to Tether, according to people familiar with the discussions. The people, like dozens of others who provided details of negotiations surrounding the Genius Act for this story — crypto industry executives, lobbyists and current and former US government officials — requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the talks.
US President Donald Trump signed the Genius Act in the White House on July 18, 2025. He hailed the bill as a “giant step to cement American dominance of global finance and crypto technology.” Photographer: Al Drago/BloombergBefore Lutnick became Trump’s commerce secretary, he was chairman and chief executive officer of the Wall Street investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, which manages Tether’s assets. From that position, he acted as a crisis manager throughout 2024, countering bad publicity about Tether and seeking to influence lawmakers on legislation the company opposed, according to congressional lobbying records, allegations contained in a federal court filing and one person who was briefed on those efforts.
After Trump took office, Hines was the closer. The then-29-year-old White House aide, a North Carolina entrepreneur and crypto investor who ran unsuccessful congressional campaigns as a Republican in 2022 and 2024, became the administration’s self-described “bully” on the bill. As negotiations neared the finish line, Hines said that a provision Tether wanted was a “red line” for the White House, according to three other people familiar with the matter.
This account of how the legislation took shape shows the previously unreported steps that first Lutnick, then Hines took that benefited Tether, which controls about 60% of the global stablecoin market. And it sheds new light on the ways that the administration’s policymaking has aligned with its appointees’ financial interests. Both Hines and Lutnick have received significant benefits from the company.
Over an 18-month period that began in 2024 and ended shortly after the passage of the Genius Act, Tether executives:
Sold the rights to a multibillion-dollar stake in their company to Lutnick’s financial services firm in April 2024 for $600 million, a price that Tether’s chairman described to a business associate as “bloody cheap.”
Invested $775 million in December 2024 in Rumble Inc., a money-losing technology company that has a partnership agreement with the unprofitable firm that runs Trump’s Truth Social platform and counts several Trump associates as investors.
Hired Hines for an executive position in August 2025, roughly one month after the bill was signed.
Made a loan to a trust benefiting Lutnick’s children as they were purchasing their father’s multibillion-dollar business interests in October 2025.
As part of a federal ethics agreement required of cabinet appointees, Lutnick had pledged to sell his stake in Cantor Fitzgerald and to recuse himself from matters that might present a conflict of interest. A spokesperson for the Commerce Department did not answer detailed questions for this story but said Lutnick complied with the terms of that agreement; divested from his holdings, including Tether; and “was not involved in any matters relating to the Genius Act’s stablecoin provisions.”
Hines didn’t respond to detailed requests for comment. Neither did the White House.
Tether said in a statement that the company “strongly rejects any suggestion that its engagement with policymakers regarding stablecoin legislation was improper” and that it regularly interacts with regulators, legislators and law enforcement officials “lawfully, transparently, and alongside a broad range of market participants.” The company also said the Genius Act provides no “special advantages to Tether,” arguing that the new US regulatory plans will “apply across the industry to any issuer seeking to operate under the framework.”
The bill drew intense lobbying from all corners of finance, including crypto exchanges, credit card companies and community banks. But Tether is by far the industry’s dominant issuer — its biggest competitor is half its size — and it had the most at stake during the 2025 discussions.
Since the law was signed, Tether, which operates from El Salvador, has continued to grow. It launched a new US token to reach American consumers and comply with the rules. Yet its core product remains the world’s most widely used stablecoin — and a go-to currency for terrorists, North Korean hackers and sanctioned entities in both Iran and Russia, according to reports compiled by industry researchers and government officials. Under the Genius Act’s provisions, that coin, known as USDT, may never be subject to regulation by US authorities.
The Genius Act’s final form contained provisions that benefited Tether and differed from federal lawmakers’ previous attempts to regulate stablecoins, which offer users convenience and pseudo-anonymity — meaning their actual identities are hidden even though their alphanumeric wallet addresses remain permanently public on the blockchain.
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In 2023 and 2024, members of Congress proposed bipartisan legislation that aimed to push foreign companies such as Tether to submit to US regulatory scrutiny — including anti-money-laundering rules — if they wanted to sell stablecoins in the US.
The Genius Act relaxed that requirement. A provision that critics call the “reciprocity loophole” would allow Tether’s USDT to be regulated by El Salvador, where the company is building a new headquarters, if the US Treasury secretary determines the Salvadoran regulatory scheme is comparable to the US approach. Rules governing such determinations are still being drafted.
Another change limited stablecoin issuers’ responsibility for ensuring that their tokens aren’t misused by criminals, terrorists or sanctions evaders. That language, known as the “defi loophole,” means that companies like Tether aren’t responsible for tracking their products on secondary markets known as decentralized finance, or “defi,” platforms. Unlike those who buy tokens through banks or exchanges, such users can trade directly on the blockchain without identifying who they are or how they intend to use the funds.
The legislation also created a three-year grace period for selling stablecoins in the US before their issuers have to comply with its terms. As lawmakers negotiated the bill’s final details, some Democrats proposed a tighter time frame, 18 months, but Tether wanted three years, according to people familiar with its position. At that point, Hines stepped in.
In negotiations, he told people that Tether was important to the White House and Republicans should stand firm. Keeping the three-year grace period was a “red line,” Hines said, according to three people familiar with his conversations.
Bo Hines, whom Trump named executive director of the Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets, took a leadership role in pushing the Genius Act through Congress. Photographer: Tierney L. Cross/BloombergSome financial experts warn that these provisions may undermine US attempts to fight money laundering by criminals and sanctioned entities while complicating Trump’s stated goal of making the US the world’s leader in digital currencies.
Timothy Massad, a former assistant secretary at the US Treasury Department during President Barack Obama’s administration, said the failure to close these so-called loopholes might put US crypto companies at a competitive disadvantage by allowing foreign issuers to sidestep costly anti-money-laundering regulations. It could also weaken the dollar, he said.
“If we want the dollar to remain the strong reserve currency of the world, we shouldn’t enable terrorists and sanctioned individuals and criminals to move dollars anonymously,” said Massad, who also served as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 2014 to 2017.
Every form of currency is vulnerable to misuse for illicit transactions. But since it introduced USDT in 2014, Tether has faced regular questions about the scrutiny it brings to its customers. In response, the company had argued that its location overseas meant it could resist what it described as US regulatory overreach. But that position evolved over time, and in December 2023, Tether announced a policy of voluntarily freezing wallets of any people or entities sanctioned by the US Treasury.
Investigators continued to find evidence that USDT was being used for such activities as the fentanyl trade in Mexico and Russian sanctions evasion. A January 2024 UN report called USDT “a preferred choice” for crypto money launderers in Southeast Asia. That year, President Joe Biden’s National Security Council debated whether to ban Tether from selling its token in the US, according to two people familiar with the talks, who asked not to be named to discuss a sensitive matter.
Ultimately, that proposal was disregarded after law enforcement officials argued that they could track illicit finance through USDT transactions. Over time, federal law enforcement officials have praised Tether for becoming more helpful in freezing tokens used by bad actors.
“The company has built one of the most effective law enforcement cooperation programs in global finance,” Tether’s spokesman said in response to questions. The company said it’s committed to deterring financial crime, and the Genius Act will strengthen such efforts.
Even so, throughout the debates over the Genius Act — and since then — USDT has remained a frequent choice for illicit users.
Throughout 2025, the sanctioned Central Bank of Iran purchased $507 million of Tether’s USDT, according to Elliptic, a blockchain analytics firm widely used by leading digital assets companies and traditional banks. That July, the same month Trump signed the act, Elliptic found that almost $2.5 billion worth of Tether’s USDT was received by wallets linked to Russian companies that, according to the Treasury Department, provide “cross-border settlement platforms for sanctions evasion.”
This year alone, more than $4 billion worth of the token was used in illicit marketplaces favored by Chinese scam networks — which perpetrate crimes including crypto cons known as pig butchering, impersonation frauds and sextortion — according to data by Elliptic.
And in the US, federal prosecutors across the country have filed scores of claims since July 2025 seeking to seize at least $172 million worth of USDT that they said was used unlawfully, according to court records.
Tether has more than twice as many tokens in circulation as its biggest competitor, Circle Internet Group Inc., but has fewer than half as many employees and uses contractors to conduct some of its analysis of suspicious transactions. Tether declined to answer specific questions about the size of its compliance department. But the company said it “works directly and regularly with over 340 law enforcement agencies across 67 jurisdictions to identify, freeze, and help recover assets linked to illicit activity.”
“This is not theoretical compliance but measurable, operational cooperation that no financial institution, including many traditional banks, can match,” said the company spokesman.
Lutnick’s CampaignsWhen Lutnick’s firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, began managing Tether’s reserves in 2021, the investment banker had already known Trump for decades. By that time, Trump was a one-term president, seeking a return to the White House. Tether was a hugely profitable company with an image problem. In 2024, Lutnick campaigned hard for them both.
Despite the importance of assuring buyers that its tokens are backed by safe assets, Tether has never published an independent audit detailing its reserves. In 2021, the company and a related exchange paid $61 million to settle claims brought by federal regulators and New York State (where it is banned from operating) that Tether misled investors about its reserves. Tether acknowledged no wrongdoing in the settlements. As written, the Genius Act will require stablecoin issuers to publish annual audits. Tether announced this year that it had hired an auditor, though it hasn’t disclosed any plans for releasing an audit.
Howard Lutnick, who was chairman and chief executive officer of Cantor Fitzgerald at the time, at the opening day of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2024. Source: BloombergAmid questions about Tether’s reserves, Lutnick came to the company’s public defense. In January 2024, he traveled to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and declared on Bloomberg TV: “They have the money they say they have.”
The following month, Lutnick traveled to El Salvador, where he met with Tether’s chairman, Giancarlo Devasini, and the country’s crypto-friendly President Nayib Bukele, the self-styled “world’s coolest dictator.” Last year, Tether announced plans to relocate its headquarters to the country’s capital, San Salvador.
And in April 2024, Cantor Fitzgerald acquired the right to a 5% stake in Tether through a $600 million convertible bond — a transaction that wasn’t publicly reported until November, after Trump won the presidency. The price was a remarkable discount, based on Tether’s own accounting: In 2024, it reported profit of about $13 billion, which suggests the company was worth at least $130 billion, according to a benchmark of publicly listed financial firms. At that level, Cantor’s $600 million stake was worth more than $6 billion on paper.
Devasini called the price Cantor paid “bloody cheap,” according to Cory Klippsten, a Bitcoin entrepreneur who met with Tether executives and Lutnick in 2024.
Klippsten was involved in a business partnership with Tether that ultimately broke down, and the sides wound up in litigation. In court filings, Klippsten has accused Tether executives of poaching his employees, code and other trade secrets and reneging on a deal; Tether has accused Klippsten of improperly using Tether’s investment as collateral in a separate transaction. As part of the litigation, Klippsten is seeking to depose Lutnick and review documents about Cantor Fitzgerald’s relationship with Tether. An attorney for Lutnick said in court that the commerce secretary had no role in the dispute and that the request is meant to “harass and embarrass” Lutnick.
In a March court filing, Klippsten said he had taken contemporaneous notes detailing his conversations with Devasini. He recounted some of those notes in filings — including the “bloody cheap” remark. The filing describes Cantor’s convertible bond as “implicit compensation for acting as Tether’s advocate in Washington and the media.”
Stalled LegislationMembers of Congress had developed their own concerns. In late 2023, Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming co-signed a letter urging the Justice Department to determine whether Tether was “providing material support and resources” to terrorism organizations, including Hamas, during the deadly attacks that October in Israel. In April 2024, Lummis and Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York introduced a bill that could have required any stablecoin issuer doing business in the US to submit to US anti-money-laundering restrictions and disclosure requirements.
At the time, Lummis made clear that to enter the US market, Tether would have to comply with US rules. “So Tether, if it chooses to remain offshore, if it’s happier with a different regulator, that’s a business choice for them,” she told CoinDesk shortly after announcing the new legislation. “But if they want the US Good Housekeeping seal of approval on their product, and we hope they will, that they’ll come into compliance in the US.”
That July, Lutnick took another opportunity to defend Tether at the 2024 Bitcoin conference in Nashville, where Trump gave the keynote address. “We would never, ever be associated with a company that has anything to do with jihad,” Lutnick said, his voice rising in anger as he reminded the audience that more than 650 Cantor employees, including his brother, had died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attack on the World Trade Center. “And it disgusts me.”
Trump speaks at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, in July 2024. Photographer: Brett Carlsen/BloombergAfter that speech, Trump — who had pivoted from crypto skeptic to crypto supporter in 2024 as he and his family members prepared to invest in the industry — invited Lutnick to join him on his campaign plane and asked him to be co-chairman of his transition committee. They flew to Minnesota, where Lutnick warmed up the crowd on stage before then-Senator JD Vance of Ohio, another vocal crypto advocate, spoke.
Trump’s surging candidacy buoyed the mood among Tether executives, according to Klippsten. “They have HOPE right now,” his notes say. “They could fly to NYC. Go on CNBC. That’s what Trump is offering them.”
Lutnick traveled in 2024 to Washington, where Cantor Fitzgerald’s lobbyists were engaging with members of Congress on stablecoin bills circulating in the House and Senate. He had a meeting with North Carolina Representative Patrick McHenry, then-chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, to discuss how a new law would affect a foreign company like Tether, according to a person familiar with the talks. McHenry didn’t respond to requests for comment. Lutnick also met with Lummis in September, although a spokesperson for the senator said the discussion focused on a potential Trump transition team and only briefly touched on her concerns about Tether and financial crimes.
The spokesperson said that Lummis “was never urged to back off of her support” for her bill, “nor was she pressured in any manner by Secretary Lutnick or those around him to make changes.”
One of Klippsten’s notes, recounted in a court filing, says that Devasini, Tether’s chairman, told him: “According to Howard, he managed to kill every bill about stablecoins, crypto, etc. There’s still some days before Congress comes to a halt. Howard says don’t expect anything upsetting.”
The bills went nowhere. The next year, both Lummis and Gillibrand voted for the Genius Act, including its provision allowing for “reciprocal” regulation by foreign countries. A spokesman for Gillibrand declined to comment on her vote. A spokesperson for Lummis said it’s not unusual for senators to “vote for something that doesn’t perfectly reflect their preferred way of regulating.” This year, Lummis is leading Senate discussions on a bill that would establish a regulatory framework for the rest of the crypto industry, beyond stablecoins.
After Trump’s November 2024 victory, Cantor helped arrange a new investment for Tether that put the stablecoin issuer more firmly into Trump’s business orbit. Around Christmas, the company invested $775 million in Rumble, the conservative video streaming company that hosts Trump’s Truth Social media platform and provides it with cloud infrastructure and advertising services.
The investment came at an unusual time; Rumble had run up $338 million in losses that year. The company, which bills itself as a “freedom-first” alternative to livestreaming and video content, counted several Trump allies who eventually joined his second administration among its investors: Vice President Vance; former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino; and former White House special adviser for AI and crypto David Sacks.
Tether’s investment set off a temporary spike in Rumble’s share price, and it closed on Dec. 26 at $16.27, a 126% gain since the day of the announcement. Rumble, which has rebranded itself as RUM Group Inc., devoted almost 68% of Tether’s investment, $525 million, to share buybacks from “certain members of key management.” Since then, Tether has gradually increased its equity stake in Rumble; it now amounts to roughly $875 million.
“Tether’s investment in Rumble reflects our shared values of decentralization, transparency and fundamental right to free expression,” Tether’s chief executive officer, Paolo Ardoino, said at the time. The company said roughly $250 million of its infusion would go for “growth initiatives,” including a crypto payments platform.
As Trump’s second administration took shape, the White House handed responsibility for shepherding stablecoin legislation to a former college football player whose introduction to cryptocurrency came when he played in the 2014 Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl.
‘Hi, Bo!’As a Washington newcomer, Bo Hines didn’t have a resume to match the crypto industry leaders and congressional staffers he met with regularly. But at 6-foot-1 and 205 pounds, he had other attributes welcome in Trump’s White House: a camera-ready jaw line, a staunch belief in the MAGA agenda and a documented refusal to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election. Also, during the fall of 2024, a business he operated with his father donated $1 million in billboard advertising to a political action committee supporting Trump’s campaign.
As the president’s choice to head the new administration’s council on digital assets, Hines worked on a range of issues, from establishing a federal stockpile of digital currencies to recommending new guidelines for regulation of crypto. A top priority was the Genius Act.
By early February 2025, the bill was circulating in Washington. Later that month, as crypto executives and lawmakers gathered at Washington’s Willard Hotel to discuss the bill, a surprise visitor showed up, according to two people who attended: Tether’s Ardoino. He told his fellow attendees that his company was serious about deterring money laundering, the people said.
In March, Ardoino posted photos of himself at the US Capitol and the White House. He told the New York Times that he’d been careful not to speak with Lutnick after Lutnick’s February confirmation as commerce secretary, to avoid any conflicts of interest.
That same month, Tether hired a Washington lobbyist who’d been representing Cantor Fitzgerald on stablecoin-related issues since 2024: Jeff Miller. Miller served in leadership roles for both of Trump’s inauguration committees, and his firm had become one of Washington’s most successful during Trump’s first term. Throughout 2025, Miller Strategies was paid $570,000 — with $480,000 from Cantor and $90,000 from Tether. “It’s very important that our voice is properly heard,” Ardoino told Bloomberg TV.
Hines, meanwhile, settled into his job. He argued that lawmakers had no right to oppose the president’s wishes, said people familiar with the matter, and pressured them to reach speedy agreements. He also began signaling that he considered concerns about the illicit use of digital tokens to be overblown. “You’re a pretty dumb criminal if you want to use digital assets to do something nefarious because that can be traced publicly in many cases,” he said during an April interview with Bitcoin Magazine.
The earliest drafts of the Genius Act troubled Tether’s competitors and Democratic lawmakers because it walked back restrictions that had been written into the 2024 versions of stablecoin legislation.
In May, a group of Democrats — including those seen as moderates on crypto — revolted, temporarily blocking the measure from advancing. In a closed-door meeting with other Democrats, two people familiar with the matter said, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York implored his colleagues to review records the Biden administration’s National Security Council had compiled about Tether’s practices and make certain the Genius Act provided strong enough safeguards to deter money laundering by US adversaries.
That month, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren urged other Democrats to reject the latest version of the bill, which she said loosened the rules to further benefit Tether.
Senator Elizabeth Warren questioned the Genius Act’s provisions. Source: Senator Elizabeth Warren/YouTubeHines brushed such concerns aside, according to people familiar with the discussions. He often invoked Trump, saying that the president wanted a deal done soon. Republican legislative leaders pressed on with the bill.
A late hurdle was the timing of the bill’s provisions. During private negotiations, Hines insisted that Republicans refuse to drop the three-year grace period — even though Democrats were seeking to cut it in half. In meetings, he said that Tether wanted three years, said three people familiar with the matter.
Ultimately, Hines prevailed. The July bill signing ceremony brought many of the bill’s important supporters together at the White House.
“Where’s Bo Hines?” Trump asked from the dais, scanning until he spotted him in the front row. “Hi, Bo! And Bo was a great football player, right? Bo was a great football player, one of the better players in college football so I know you from that also.” (Hines was a standout receiver for the North Carolina State Wolfpack in 2014; he subsequently transferred to Yale University, where shoulder injuries hampered his football career.)
Hines stood to a round of applause and sat down. To his immediate right, also in the front row, was Tether’s CEO, Ardoino. One month later, Tether announced that it was hiring Hines as an adviser. Soon thereafter, he was promoted to chief executive of Tether’s new US product called USAT. This new token accounts for just a fraction of Tether’s business, with roughly $186 million of them in circulation. Hines told a crypto conference last year that he expects both USAT and USDT to meet Genius Act standards.
Also seated in the signing ceremony’s front row, between Hines and Vice President Vance, was Lutnick. Trump called on him to stand for applause, praising his work on tariff negotiations. “You have done a great job, Howard,” the president said.
Three months later, Lutnick completed the sale of Cantor Fitzgerald to trusts benefiting his children. The day after it closed, a document was filed in New York that showed Tether had loaned one of those trusts an undisclosed sum of money.
Lutnick has declined to reveal what his children paid for his holdings or whether the loan they received from Tether was used to finance the transaction. That year, Tether had been speaking to investors about a $500 billion capital raise. At that valuation, Cantor Fitzgerald’s potential 5% stake in the company would have been worth $25 billion on paper.
(Updates to say in 15th paragraph that Tether's statement came directly from the company.)
Tržní kapitalizace USDT za 60 dní klesla zhruba o 5,4 miliardy USD na asi 184,14 miliardy USD. Tether přesto vykázal v 1. čtvrtletí 2026 zisk 1,04 miliardy USD a drží rezervní polštář ve výši 8,23 miliardy USD.
USDT, the stablecoin that essentially functions as crypto’s version of the US dollar, just got a lot lighter. Tether’s flagship token has seen its market capitalization drop by approximately $5.4 billion over the past 60 days, falling from a peak near $190 billion in May 2026 to roughly $184 billion as of late July.
The numbers behind the decline As of July 21, 2026, Tether reports USDT net circulation at approximately $184.14 billion, a figure corroborated by analytics platforms including CoinGecko and DeFiLlama. The token peaked near $190 billion in May, meaning the total drawdown is closer to $6 billion when measured from that high-water mark.
The broader stablecoin market has contracted by roughly $10 billion since its May peak, with a $7.7 billion decline logged in June alone. That means USDT and its closest competitor USDC account for a significant chunk of the overall pullback.
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Earlier this year, USDT experienced a comparatively modest $1.5 billion supply drop in February. The current multi-month trend represents one of the most significant sustained pullbacks since the turbulent 2022-2023 period.
Tether’s financial health tells a different story Tether posted a Q1 2026 profit of $1.04 billion and maintains a reserve buffer of $8.23 billion above and beyond its token obligations.
The company still commands roughly 58% of the total stablecoin market, which stood at around $321 billion as of April 2026 data. Even after shedding billions in supply, USDT remains the undisputed heavyweight of the stablecoin world.
What this means for investors A $5.4 billion decline in USDT supply over 60 days is worth monitoring but not necessarily alarming in isolation. The broader stablecoin market still sits well above $300 billion, and Tether’s financial position remains robust by any reasonable measure.
For traders actively positioning in crypto markets, the practical takeaway is straightforward: watch stablecoin flows as closely as you watch price charts. The $184 billion figure for USDT is still enormous by any historical standard.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Plánované trojstranné sloučení Tether-backed Twenty One Capital, Strike a Elektron Energy bylo zrušeno. Strike zůstane samostatnou firmou, zatímco Twenty One a Elektron dál jednají.
Strike will remain a standalone company after the proposed three-way merger was scrapped, while Twenty One Capital and Elektron continue discussions, Bloomberg reported.
A proposed merger involving Tether-backed crypto companies Twenty One Capital, Strike and Elektron Energy has reportedly been scrapped.
Jack Mallers will step down as CEO of Twenty One Capital while remaining CEO of Strike, according to Bloomberg. Elektron Energy CEO Raphael Zagury has been appointed to succeed Mallers.
Strike will continue operating as a standalone company instead of combining with Twenty One Capital. Discussions between Twenty One and Elektron are continuing, Bloomberg reported. Tether holds majority stakes in both companies.
Twenty One’s (XXI) NYSE-traded shares were little changed in Tuesday’s premarket activity.
As Cointelegraph reported in April, Tether said it planned to vote in favor of a proposed merger between Twenty One Capital and Mallers’ Bitcoin payments company, Strike. The proposal also envisioned merging the combined company with Bitcoin miner Elektron Energy.
Twenty One Capital launched in 2025 with backing from Tether, Cantor Fitzgerald and SoftBank. Tether bought SoftBank’s stake in the company in May.
Twenty One held 43,514 Bitcoin at the time of writing, making it the world’s second-largest corporate BTC holder behind Michael Saylor’s Strategy, according to tracking website BitcoinTreasuries.
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
Americké ministerstvo financí zmrazilo přes 130 milionů USD v kryptoměnách na čtyřech peněženkách na síti Tron napojených na íránskou IRGC. Tether na základě pokynu OFAC zablokoval zhruba 131 milionů USD v USDT.
The US Treasury just proved, again, that stablecoins on public blockchains are not exactly the untraceable getaway vehicle some sanctioned regimes hoped they’d be. The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned four Tron blockchain wallets linked to Iran’s Central Bank, Bank Markazi, freezing over $130 million in digital assets, primarily USDT.
The wallets were tied to financial activities associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Tether, the company behind USDT, coordinated directly with OFAC to freeze approximately $131 million across the four addresses, which had cumulatively received more than $165 million in stablecoins before the hammer dropped.
A pattern of escalating financial pressure Back in April 2026, OFAC froze $344.2 million in two separate wallets also linked to the Central Bank of Iran. Then in June 2026, the US imposed sanctions on major Iranian digital asset exchanges, including Nobitex and Bitpin. Now this latest action in mid-July adds another $131 million to the frozen pile.
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In roughly three months, US authorities have immobilized nearly half a billion dollars in crypto assets connected to Iranian state financial infrastructure.
Iran has built a digital asset ecosystem estimated at around $7.8 billion, with Nobitex alone handling more than 50% of the country’s crypto inflows in 2025.
Why Tron and USDT keep showing up Tron offers low transaction fees and fast settlement times. USDT provides dollar-denominated stability without needing a US bank account. For entities under sanctions, that combination is irresistible.
USDT has a built-in kill switch. Tether, as the centralized issuer, has the technical capability to freeze any USDT held at a specific wallet address. When OFAC designates an address, Tether can and does blacklist it, rendering the tokens unmovable. This is fundamentally different from, say, holding Bitcoin or Ether, where no single entity can freeze your funds.
What this means for investors The immediate market impact of freezing $131 million is negligible in the context of USDT’s total supply, which sits well north of $100 billion.
For exchanges, the June 2026 sanctions against Nobitex and Bitpin were a message to every exchange in every jurisdiction: know your customer, or become the next target.
Traders and investors holding USDT should understand the trade-off they’re making. Centralized stablecoins offer stability and liquidity, but they also offer a single point of regulatory control. USDT is fundamentally a permissioned asset, not a permissionless one, regardless of which blockchain it sits on.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Tether Gold (XAUT) získal v Abu Dhabi Global Market schválení jako Accepted Spot Commodity. To otevírá cestu autorizovaným firmám nabízet služby navázané na toto tokenizované aktivum kryté zlatem.
Tether has secured recognition for its Tether Gold (XAUT) token as an Accepted Spot Commodity within the Abu Dhabi Global Market, clearing the way for authorized firms in the financial center to offer services tied to the gold-backed digital asset under ADGM’s regulatory framework, according to a Monday statement.
XAUT is a tokenized gold product issued by Tether that gives holders ownership of one fine troy ounce of physical gold per token, with the bullion stored in secure vaults, mainly in Switzerland.
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The token has a market value of nearly $2.5 billion and is issued on both the Ethereum (ERC-20) and Tron (TRC-20) blockchains, allowing investors to buy, transfer and trade gold digitally while retaining rights to allocated London Good Delivery bars.
According to the company, the approval follows close collaboration with ADGM to demonstrate its compliance standards and operational transparency.
The recognition provides a formal regulatory framework for XAUT in the financial center and further strengthens Tether’s footprint in the UAE as the country continues developing its digital asset ecosystem. Tether Gold is backed on a one-to-one basis by physical gold, with each token representing one troy fine ounce of gold from a London Good Delivery bar.
Tether said the latest approval expands on ADGM’s previous recognition of USDT and highlights the increasing adoption of tokenized real-world assets among institutional investors.
The company said it will continue working with regulators and industry partners across the Middle East to support regulated digital asset markets.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
TLDR: GENIUS Act’s one-year rule deadline passed on July 18, 2026, with zero final rules issued. Stablecoin supply grew 18.6% to $308.1 billion despite the unfinished regulatory framework. USDT and USDC together control 83% of the stablecoin market as rules remain drafts. Full regulatory effect now shifts to January 18, 2027, regardless of rulemaking progress. The GENIUS Act reached its first anniversary on July 18, 2026, without a single final rule published by regulators. The statutory deadline for completing payment stablecoin regulations passed with eight proposals still pending across several federal agencies.
Meanwhile, the stablecoin market expanded from $259.7 billion to $308.1 billion over the same period, an 18.6% increase recorded entirely under an unfinished regulatory framework. The law’s full effect now shifts to January 18, 2027, regardless of rulemaking progress.
Market Growth Outpaces Regulatory Progress On-chain data pulled on July 19 confirmed the scale of the gap between law and enforcement. Total stablecoin supply climbed from $259.7 billion at signing to a May peak above $320 billion. It settled at $308.1 billion by the missed deadline, showing steady expansion despite regulatory delays.
Four agencies hold responsibility for finalizing GENIUS Act rules, and none has completed the process. The OCC proposed a broad implementing rule in March covering reserves, capital and custody standards. The FDIC and NCUA submitted separate prudential and licensing proposals, while Treasury addressed state-level regulation in April.
Market concentration adds weight to the delay, since two issuers control most circulating supply. USDT and USDC together represent about 83% of the stablecoin market, meaning any final rule shapes their operations directly. USD1, the World Liberty Financial token, has grown into the fifth-largest stablecoin despite limited scale a year ago.
An institutional cohort has expanded inside this regulatory gap throughout the GENIUS Act’s first year. PayPal’s PYUSD, BlackRock’s BUIDL, Ripple’s RLUSD and Paxos-backed USDG all grew without finished federal guidance. These issuers built market share while the rules meant to govern them remained in draft form.
Stablecoin Issuers Face Uncertainty Ahead Of 2027 Deadline Congress built a backstop into the original legislation covering scenarios where deadlines slip. The Act takes effect on the earlier of January 18, 2027, or 120 days after final rules publish.
Since no rule finalized after September 20 can move that date earlier, January 18 now stands as the effective start.
Draft proposals outline requirements without yet carrying legal force for issuers. Reserves must sit one-to-one in cash and short-dated Treasuries under current drafts.
Redemptions would need processing within two business days, alongside a five-million-dollar capital floor from OCC language.
Individual issuers face different exposure depending on their current structure and market. Circle’s USDC has the most riding on final capital and reserve requirements. Tether launched USAT, a US-compliant token, anticipating rules that remain unpublished a year later.
Stablecoins function as the settlement layer beneath most crypto market activity today. Every DEX pair and on-chain treasury operates on infrastructure lacking finished US legal grounding. The market added $48 billion in new supply without waiting for regulatory certainty to arrive.
Tether má před sebou dva roky na to, aby upravil USDT podle amerického zákona GENIUS Act, jinak může být na amerických kryptoměnových platformách omezen. Podle posledních zveřejnění by až čtvrtina rezerv USDT stále nesplňovala nové standardy.
The U.S. GENIUS Act to regulate stablecoins just hit a milestone, and Tether may have some compliance work ahead of it. (Jesse Hamilton/CoinDesk)Summary
The GENIUS Act that governs U.S. stablecoin issuers is complicated and a work-in-progress, but now that its first anniversary is reached, Tether and other non-U.S. issuers have two years left to figure out their compliance strategies. The one-year mark was supposed to see the federal financial regulators finishing their stablecoin rules, but none have done so, yet, leaving some compliance uncertainty. The basic outlines of the U.S. standards, though, would force the most widely circulated coin — Tether’s USDT — to make a lot of major changes before it could satisfy the law. The world's leading stablecoin by volume, Tether's USDT, could be shoved out of the U.S. markets if the company doesn't revamp dramatically in the next two years.
Despite assurances last year from CEO Paolo Ardoino that the stablecoin giant would achieve U.S. compliance for USDT, the company hasn't yet revealed a sharp turn toward the demands of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, which became law one year ago.
With that consequential anniversary of President Donald Trump's signing of the law passing on Saturday, the industry has marked a surge in stablecoin interest and issuance, plus a wide array of crypto and traditional financial firms pursuing U.S. trust bank charters to ease their stablecoin pathways. But the one-year mark was also supposed to be a deadline for federal financial regulators to have rules in place implementing GENIUS, and they've so far fallen short. That could be problematic as experts and industry insiders still reveal some disagreements over how the law should be interpreted.
At this point, it's still two firms battling for market dominance, with a few others — including the issuer tied to President Donald Trump, World Liberty Financial — fighting it out for a very distant third place. Tether's chief rival, U.S.-based Circle, has made more of an apparent effort to pre-comply with what U.S. regulations will soon require.
Meanwhile, Tether's most recent disclosures suggest as much as a quarter of USDT's reserves — the stockpile meant to ensure that those redeeming their coins will always be able to — were still plugged into assets that won't meet GENIUS Act standards, such as precious metals, lending and bitcoin BTC$64,666.25 holdings. GENIUS requires that issuers are fully reserved in the most highly liquid and reliable assets — essentially cash and U.S. Treasuries.
"Tether will comply with the GENIUS Act," Ardoino told CoinDesk at the White House, in the moments after Trump signed GENIUS a year ago. While the CEO indicated then that his company would pursue a separate U.S.-specific token, he said that USDT would also be managed to meet the law's foreign-issuer standards.
When asked multiple times for an update on its compliance stance in recent days, representatives of El Salvador-based Tether didn't offer a response.
This year, Tether rolled out USAT — launched with U.S. standards in mind and issued through U.S. banking partner Anchorage Digital. So far, it remains at a relatively low level of usage.
“Non-compliant stablecoins cannot be used by U.S. institutions when the safe harbor expires in 2028, but we don’t expect the market to wait," said Kevin Wysocki, head of policy at Anchorage Digital, the crypto-native bank that manages a number of stablecoins. He said the company believes institutional users will move toward "compliant, bank-issued digital dollars well ahead of that deadline."
Do they have two years?GENIUS included a three-year grace period for compliance, and two years remain, after which U.S. crypto platforms won't be able to offer stablecoins whose issuers haven't checked all the regulatory boxes. However, there seems to be some disagreement over whether foreign issuers are meant to enjoy that same safe harbor. Some lawyers in finance assume that Tether gets until July 18, 2028, to comply, but others have suggested that foreign issuers would have to comply the moment GENIUS officially goes live, which is likely six months from now in January.
"Upon the effectiveness of the GENIUS Act, foreign issuers will need to immediately comply with lawful orders to seize and freeze coins held by illicit actors, but they will have a runway of approximately two more years to prepare for the additional requirements so that their coins may remain eligible for listing on U.S. centralized trading platforms," said Justin Levine, a lawyer at Davis Polk who advises clients on stablecoin issues, adding that one of those remaining requirements — registration with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — is likely to require a “significant undertaking”
"So they do have time, as long as they comply with seize and freeze orders,” he said. “But those that want to have their coins continue to be traded on U.S. centralized platforms and have that liquidity should still be thinking about it right now, even if it's not imminent that they're going to get delisted."
While Levine's firm and others have interpreted the deadline for foreign issuers as being two years away, an analysis last year from law firm Paul Hastings had read GENIUS as offering separate timelines for foreign and domestic firms. But after being asked about its view recently, that interpretation was removed from the firm's website, and its spokespeople didn't immediately respond to CoinDesk's requests for clarity.
A dive into the footnotes of federal regulators suggests a two-track deadline in the law. The OCC, the national bank regulator that will also be supervising certain stablecoin issuers, said in a footnote within a proposal for implementing aspects of GENIUS that the drop-dead date was generally in 2028, but that it gets triggered the moment the law is effective (by January) for the coins of foreign issuers that don't meet "certain requirements." Those requirements, though, could simply be referring to the shorter-term demands that include the ability to freeze bad actors' assets and, when requested by the government, to seize them.
The fuller slate of requirements for foreign issuers will eventually include demands that their home regulator be certified by the secretary of the Treasury as being "comparable" to the U.S. regime, that the firms be OCC-registered and they keep their reserves in U.S. institutions.
Regulators run behindHowever, none of the federal agencies have finalized their GENIUS rules, leaving some uncertainty about what will be set into regulatory stone even as the first requirements approach. A number of regulators' efforts are underway and may soon be completed, but others remain in preliminary stages. In other words, companies have no regulations to comply with just yet.
If there's lingering disagreement over GENIUS timelines, Trevor Tanifum, a managing principal at consulting firm FS Vector, said he anticipates that smaller platforms with low risk appetites will delist certain stablecoins and avoid the bother. But others may be willing to press on.
He said that prominent companies with robust legal departments may be willing to occupy a different view, such as: "We're going to spend the money on lawyers and lobbyists until someone walks up to our door and forces us to delist these non-U.S. issuers."
"It's pretty much what has happened, I think, at every major crypto hurdle," he said. "These platforms still count on a lot of transaction volumes, liquidity from non-U.S. issuers, and so I can't see them giving up those volumes without a fight."
The biggest U.S. exchange is Coinbase, but the company declined to discuss its stablecoin listing plans under GENIUS.
The exchange and much of the rest of the crypto industry has more recently shifted policy attention toward a different effort of Congress: the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. The sector's lobbyists had aimed for a one-two punch with GENIUS and Clarity, and they'd succeeded last year in getting the stablecoin bill passed into law.
But that first major crypto law was meant to complement a wider-reaching regulation of U.S. crypto markets under the Clarity Act, which is still languishing in the final weeks of its potential 2026 congressional window. It remains unclear at the first anniversary of the GENIUS Act whether its companion will join it on the books. And if it does, it's likely to include some provisions that overhaul some of GENIUS's language.
Either way, Tether, Circle and the rest of the stablecoin sector are on track to be federally regulated in the coming months under the new law, and how those regulations are navigated may upend which firms play a leading role.
OKX Europe spustila jednosměrnou konverzi, která umožňuje vkládat USDT a převést jej na MiCA-kompatibilní USDC. Služba má pomoci zákazníkům v EU, kde platformy kvůli regulaci USDT omezují.
OKX Europe has launched a one-way conversion feature allowing customers to deposit USDT and convert it into USDC, offering a regulated migration path as the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) rules limit support for the world’s largest stablecoin.
According to a company announcement shared with Cointelegraph, the feature lets customers deposit Tether’s USDt (USDT) into their OKX Europe account and convert the tokens into USDC (USDC), one of the largest stablecoins available under the European Union’s MiCA framework.
Tether has not obtained authorization to issue USDT under MiCA, prompting many European platforms to restrict deposits, delist trading pairs or convert customer balances into compliant alternatives as the European Union completed the framework’s rollout on July 1.
OKX Europe said the feature is designed for customers whose existing platforms no longer accept USDT or plan to migrate their balances automatically. The exchange said conversions can be completed at the customer’s discretion rather than through a platform-imposed deadline.
The move comes even as USDT remains the dominant stablecoin globally. According to DefiLlama, Tether accounts for about 59% of the nearly $310 billion stablecoin market, with a market capitalization of roughly $184 billion, compared with about $73 billion for Circle’s USDC.
OKX Europe serves customers across 30 EU and European Economic Area countries under its MiCA license.
Source: DefiLlama
Why did Tether reject MiCA?Tether has defended its decision not to seek MiCA authorization for USDT, even as the move prompted many European crypto platforms to delist or restrict the stablecoin. Since the EU’s regulatory framework began taking effect in late 2024, exchanges across the region have been shifting users toward MiCA-compliant alternatives.
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino has repeatedly criticized MiCA, arguing its reserve requirements create unnecessary risks for stablecoin issuers by requiring a portion of reserves to be held with European credit institutions.
In a May 2025 interview with Cointelegraph, Ardoino described the framework as “very dangerous when it comes to stablecoins,” saying Tether chose not to pursue authorization despite the likelihood that USDT would lose support on European exchanges.
The company has shown little sign of changing course. In a July 2025 post on X, Ardoino said Tether would reconsider seeking MiCA authorization only “when MiCA becomes safer for consumers and stablecoin issuers.”
Source: Paolo Ardoino
Recently, digital banking platform Revolut said it will stop supporting USDT for customers in the European Economic Area and Switzerland, giving users until Aug. 31 to sell or withdraw their holdings before automatically converting any remaining balances into their base currency.
Magazine: The British Virgin Islands are a top crypto hub no one ever talks about: Here’s why
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Objem obchodů s USDT ve Venezuele dosáhl mezi 11. červnem a 13. červencem zhruba 75 % měsíčního vývozu ropy. PDVSA už od let 2023–2024 požaduje platby v USDT.
Venezuela, a country sitting on the world’s largest proven oil reserves, now has a parallel financial system powered by a token pegged to the US dollar. USDT trading volume in the country reached roughly 75% of monthly oil exports during the period from June 11 to July 13, a figure that would have sounded absurd even two years ago.
How Tether became Venezuela’s shadow dollar PDVSA, Venezuela’s state oil company, began requiring USDT prepayments for oil sales as early as 2023-2024. By Q1 2024, many deals demanded half the cargo value upfront in Tether’s stablecoin.
According to economist Asdrúbal Oliveros, as cited by the Wall Street Journal, an estimated 80% of Venezuela’s oil revenue is expected to be settled in USDT by late 2025 or early 2026.
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Venezuela’s total crypto transaction volume tells an even bigger story. Chainalysis data shows the country recorded $44.6 billion in crypto transactions in the 12 months ending June 2025.
The sanctions squeeze and stablecoin escape valve US sanctions on Venezuela have progressively tightened over the past several years, targeting PDVSA specifically and making it nearly impossible for the company to access the global financial system through normal channels. USDT offers something the bolívar cannot: stability. Venezuela’s local currency has been ravaged by hyperinflation for years, making it essentially useless as a store of value.
Tether reportedly froze at least 41 wallets linked to Venezuelan sanctions evasion attempts by mid-2024. Then in January 2026, Tether executed a larger freeze totaling $182 million.
Why this matters beyond Venezuela For the broader crypto market, Venezuela’s USDT adoption creates a tension: it validates that stablecoins serve a genuine economic function in real commerce and commodity settlement, while handing ammunition to regulators who have argued that crypto enables sanctions evasion.
Traditional oil market intelligence, built on tracking tanker movements and banking flows, becomes less reliable when settlement happens on-chain through layered wallets. Circle’s USDC has positioned itself as the compliance-first alternative to Tether, but USDT’s dominance in emerging and sanctioned markets gives it a usage moat that is hard to replicate.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Paolo Ardoino uvedl, že USDT přidává přes 30 milionů nových peněženek za čtvrtletí a celkově se blíží 500 milionům. V Q3 2024 Tether zaznamenal 36,25 milionu nových peněženek.
Tether is adding new wallets at a pace that would make most fintech companies weep into their pitch decks. CEO Paolo Ardoino says the company’s USDT stablecoin is onboarding more than 30 million new wallets every single quarter, a growth clip that has pushed the total user base to approximately 500 million wallets.
The quarterly additions aren’t just a rough estimate Ardoino throws around at conferences. In Q3 2024, Tether recorded 36.25 million new USDT wallets, representing an average quarterly growth rate of about 9%.
By November 2025, Ardoino pegged the total at around 500 million wallets concentrated heavily in emerging markets. Projections suggest that figure could stretch past 530 million by early 2026 if the current pace holds.
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Over 100 million users reportedly hold USDT on centralized exchanges, meaning the actual footprint of Tether’s stablecoin extends well beyond what blockchain explorers can count.
On the supply side, Tether’s attestation covering the first three quarters of 2025 showed 174.4 billion USDT in circulation, backed by what Tether says is a robust portfolio of US Treasuries.
In countries where the local currency loses purchasing power faster than you can spend it, a dollar-pegged digital token isn’t a novelty. It’s a financial lifeline. Ardoino has consistently framed USDT’s expansion as a financial inclusion play, and the wallet data from emerging markets supports that narrative. People use it for remittances, savings, and everyday transactions in places where traditional banking infrastructure is either expensive, unreliable, or simply absent.
For context, PayPal took roughly two decades to hit 400 million active accounts globally.
Circle’s USDC has made meaningful inroads with institutional clients and regulatory compliance, but Tether’s grassroots adoption in emerging markets is a fundamentally different competitive moat.
USDT serves as the primary quote currency on most major exchanges outside the US. When Tether’s supply grows, it typically signals fresh capital entering the crypto ecosystem, either through direct minting by institutional counterparties or organic demand from users converting fiat into stablecoins.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Stablecoin giant Tether reportedly invested $20 million in the Argentine neobank Ualá, as part of its broader push in Latin America.
The investment formed part of a $197 million equity funding round announced by Ualá in March and led by Allianz X, according to Bloomberg. Ualá disclosed Tether as a participant in the round at the time but did not reveal the size of its investment.
Cointelegraph contacted Tether for confirmation but had not received a response by publication.
Earlier in July, Tether announced a $20 million investment in Brazilian crypto exchange Mercado Bitcoin to support the expansion of its onchain infrastructure across Latin America.
In April, Tether led a $14 million Series A funding round for the Argentine crypto platform Belo, with participation from Titan Fund, The Venture City, Mindset Ventures, G2 and other existing investors.
Tether issues USDt (USDT), the world’s largest stablecoin, which had a market capitalization of $184.4 billion at the time of writing, according to CoinMarketCap.
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
Americké ministerstvo financí nechalo zmrazit čtyři Tron peněženky s USDT v hodnotě 131 milionů USD, které byly podle Scotta Bessenta napojené na íránskou centrální banku.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the US government ordered the freezing of more than $130 million in cryptocurrency held in wallets associated with Iran, in response to escalating tensions in the Middle East.
Wallet freeze targets Iran’s Central BankBlockchain investigator Specter earlier identified onchain data showing that stablecoin issuer Tether froze four Tron blockchain wallets containing a total of $131 million worth of USDt (USDT). Bessent confirmed that these wallets were linked to the Central Bank of Iran.
Mini dictionary: Tron, a blockchain platform focused on high-throughput and scalable decentralized applications, supports USDT (Tether) token issuance and transactions. Tether is a popular stablecoin pegged to the US dollar, widely used in cryptocurrency trading and payments.
Bessent emphasized the Treasury Department’s efforts to counteract Iran’s financial activities using digital assets. He stated, “US Treasury is committed to disrupting and degrading Iran’s illicit financial activities, including its abuse of digital assets.” He added that authorities will continue tracing and blocking funds to prevent the Iranian government from accessing income generated via illicit operations.
“We will continue to aggressively follow the money and deny the Iranian regime access to the proceeds of its illicit revenue schemes.”
Ongoing pressure campaign against IranThe asset freeze coincided with the breakdown of a ceasefire between the US and Iran. Washington renewed its blockade of Iranian ports, while the US Central Command reported a new wave of military strikes on targets in Iran. On the same day, Iranian defense sources claimed to have conducted drone operations against American military facilities at Jordan’s Al Azraq Air Base.
This is not the first time the US government has coordinated with Tether on such actions. In April, Tether stated it froze over $344 million in USDT at the request of US authorities, as part of broader measures targeting Iran’s access to international financial systems.
MonthFrozen Amount (USDT)Initiated byApril$344 millionTether, US authoritiesJune$131 millionTether, US TreasuryOperation Economic Fury expands seizuresBessent earlier reported in May that the US had seized around $1 billion in Iranian crypto assets since the introduction of Operation Economic Fury, a financial pressure campaign begun in March 2025.
He described the ongoing initiative as a comprehensive effort targeting procurement networks supplying the Iranian military. “Through Economic Fury, the Treasury Department is disrupting the foreign procurement networks that support the Iranian military’s efforts to acquire weapons,” Bessent stated in June.
Treasury has frozen the Iranian regime’s assets, severely disrupted its economy, and dismantled the Iranian war machine. Treasury will not tolerate any support of the Iranian military.
TRM, an analytics firm specializing in blockchain forensics, reported that entities linked to Iran moved $3.8 billion in crypto through CoinEx, a global cryptocurrency exchange, as part of operations scrutinized under the ongoing sanctions framework.
Mini dictionary: TRM Labs is a blockchain intelligence company that analyzes cryptocurrency transactions to detect financial crime, money laundering, and sanction violations.
US authorities have repeatedly signaled that digital assets will remain a focus in efforts to clamp down on Iranian financial networks, with further actions possible as hostilities continue.
Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.
Circle vyhrála arbitráž proti fondu Heka Funds podporovanému Tetherem, který byl z platformy vyloučen kvůli podezření z manipulace trhu. Fond požadoval 49 milionů USD na ušlém zisku.
The stablecoin cold war just got a lot less cold. Circle, the company behind USDC, banned a Tether-backed investment fund from its platform in late 2023 over concerns that the fund was engaging in trading activity designed to manipulate markets in favor of Circle’s biggest rival.
The fund fought back with a $49 million arbitration claim. It lost. And now the details are public, offering a rare window into just how aggressively the two dominant stablecoin issuers are competing for control of a market worth roughly $307 billion.
What happened with Heka Funds The fund in question is Heka Funds, a Malta-based investment vehicle managed by London’s Abraxas Capital Management and backed by Tether. Circle determined that Heka’s trading patterns on its platform looked suspiciously like market manipulation, specifically the kind that would benefit Tether at Circle’s expense.
That’s exactly what Circle did. It banned Heka Funds from its platform entirely.
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Heka didn’t take it quietly. The fund initiated arbitration proceedings in 2024, claiming Circle’s ban cost it $49 million in lost profits. The arbitrator disagreed. The ruling came down in Circle’s favor, validating the company’s decision to remove Heka from its ecosystem.
The stablecoin rivalry beneath the surface To understand why this matters, you need to understand the dynamics between USDC and USDT. These two tokens together dominate the stablecoin market, which sits at approximately $307 billion in total value. Tether’s USDT is the larger of the two by a significant margin, but Circle’s USDC has carved out its own substantial position, particularly among institutional users and in regulated markets.
Tether has long operated with a degree of opacity that has drawn scrutiny from regulators and skeptics alike. Circle, by contrast, has positioned itself as the compliance-first alternative, publishing regular attestation reports and pursuing a more transparent operational model.
Whether Tether itself had any direct involvement in or knowledge of Heka’s trading strategies remains unclear from the available details. But the optics alone, a Tether-backed entity accused of manipulating markets on Circle’s platform, tell you everything about the trust deficit between these two camps.
What this tells us about stablecoin oversight This dispute, which became public on July 14, highlights a broader shift in how stablecoin issuers police activity on their platforms.
Circle’s decision to ban Heka suggests that stablecoin issuers are now treating platform surveillance as a core business function. When your token’s credibility depends on maintaining a stable peg and market confidence, letting potentially manipulative trading slide is an existential risk.
What this means for investors The $49 million arbitration claim from Heka puts a number on the financial stakes. That figure represents what a single fund claims it lost from being cut off from Circle’s ecosystem.
Circle’s arbitration victory gives it a concrete data point to present to institutional allocators who care about governance and risk management.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Tether vedl investiční kolo Series A v objemu 7 milionů USD do Pact Labs, aby rozšířil USA₮ v oblasti mezd a plateb v USA. Cílem je rychlejší přístup k výplatám a širší využití stablecoinu v běžných finančních službách.
Tether Leads $7 Million Series A in Pact Labs to Expand USA₮ Across Payroll and Payments
14 July 2026 – Tether, the largest company in the digital asset ecosystem, today announced that it has led a $7 million Series A financing round in Pact Labs, with participation from Blockchange Ventures and Lasagna. The investment will support Pact Labs’ development as a core infrastructure provider for USA₮ across payroll, earned wage access, credit, and everyday payments.
Through the investment, Tether aims to expand the utility of USA₮ by integrating the digital dollar designed to be compliant with U.S. regulations directly into the financial systems used by American workers and businesses. Pact Labs’ infrastructure enables enterprise platforms to embed digital wallets, move wages in real time, and offer financial services without relying on the delays and operating limitations of legacy payment rails.
The U.S. payroll system moves over $11 trillion annually, yet much of its underlying infrastructure was designed decades ago. Workers can wait days or weeks to access wages they have already earned, while delays between payroll cycles can contribute to overdraft fees, short-term borrowing, and other avoidable financial costs.
By supporting payroll and earned wage access through Pact Labs, USA₮ can give workers faster access to their earnings while enabling employers and financial platforms to operate around the clock. The collaboration is intended to make digital dollars useful within familiar, everyday financial experiences rather than requiring users to navigate separate or highly technical systems.
“This confirms what our transaction data has shown for years: the demand for dollar-denominated settlement is a wages story,” said Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether. “Workers in emerging markets have used USD₮ to bridge payroll gaps for years because their domestic systems failed them first. We are now building the same capability into the U.S. market, with USA₮, because even a functional system built on batch processing means unnecessary costs for the people who can least absorb them.”
“USA₮ serves real people, and nothing is more real than a paycheck,” said Bo Hines, CEO of Tether USA₮. “Pact Labs gives us the rails to make digital dollars designed to be compliant with U.S. regulations directly into the hands of millions of American workers, faster, cheaper, and without the intermediaries that slow them down.”
The investment advances Tether’s strategy of supporting infrastructure that brings digital dollars into practical, high-frequency use cases. Payroll represents one of the largest and most universal financial flows in the United States, creating an opportunity for stablecoin technology to improve how people receive, hold, and use their money.
About USA₮
USA₮ is a dollar-backed stablecoin issued by Anchorage Digital Bank, N.A., that Tether, the global leader in stablecoin technology, has collaborated to launch. Purpose-built to serve the U.S. market and support American regulatory standards, USA₮ will be the foundational rail for the next generation of American commerce, trade, and finance.
USA₮ underscores Tether’s commitment to driving U.S. dominance and leadership in the evolving digital asset economy. USA₮ will set a new benchmark in the U.S. for utility-driven stablecoins designed to deliver long-term value, strong governance, and real-world applications. https://usat.io/
Bolívie zvažuje začlenění USDT od Tetheru do národního platebního systému jako regulovanou alternativu k bolivianu a USD. Zavedení zatím prochází technickým posouzením a vyžadovalo by přísnější AML kontroly.
Bolivia is evaluating a framework to integrate USDT into its national payments system as a regulated alternative to the boliviano and U.S. dollar.Crypto usage has spiked in the country, with transaction volumes hitting $430 million in the year after the central bank removed restrictions in mid-2024.Official adoption will require rigorous anti-money laundering controls because Bolivia remains on the Financial Action Task Force's grey list.Bolivia is considering adding Tether's USDT stablecoin to its national payments system, marking another step in the country's shift from banning crypto transactions to allowing regulated digital asset use.
Economy Minister José Gabriel Espinoza said at a press conference on Monday that the government is evaluating whether USDT could circulate alongside the boliviano, the country’s fiat currency, and the U.S. dollar.
The proposal remains under technical review and the government has not published implementation rules or granted the stablecoin legal-tender status, local news outlet La Razón reported.
Officials are developing a framework for banks, digital wallets and payment providers, according to Espinoza. Any rollout would require stronger anti-money laundering controls as Bolivia remains on the Financial Action Task Force's grey list, which subjects the country to increased monitoring over shortcomings in its financial crime regime.
The proposal comes amid a sharp rise in crypto adoption after Bolivia's central bank lifted restrictions on transactions in June 2024. Central bank data shows that crypto transaction volume climbed from $46.5 million in the first half of 2024 to $294 million during the same period last year. Total transaction volume rose 630% after restrictions were removed, the central bank has said.
Demand has increased as businesses and consumers look for alternatives to scarce U.S. dollars in the country. Bolivia ended its long-standing fixed dollar peg and moved to a floating exchange rate earlier this year.
State energy company YPFB announced plans last year to use crypto for energy imports, while Bolivia's central bank has also looked to El Salvador for help with its crypto regulatory framework.
State-controlled Banco Unión and its Yasta wallet start letting customers buy USDT through EFY Finance in April for international payments and remittances.
Binance has released its 44th proof-of-reserves report, showing that customer Bitcoin holdings increased during June while Ethereum and Tether balances declined.
Summary
Binance users raised Bitcoin holdings 1.22%, adding 7,715 BTC during June, the latest snapshot showed. Ethereum and Tether balances declined, while Binance continued publishing monthly reserve data for customer verification. Reserve snapshots show account balances, but they cannot explain whether users bought, sold, or withdrew. The report used a snapshot taken on July 1 and compared the figures with customer balances recorded on June 1.
Customer Bitcoin holdings rose 1.22% to about 640,000 BTC, an increase of 7,715 BTC. Ethereum holdings fell 1.41% to around 4.08 million ETH, a decline of 58,591 ETH. Customer Tether holdings dropped 1.51% to about 33.7 billion USDT, falling by roughly 510 million USDT.
Binance customer Bitcoin holdings continue rising The July figures extend the rise in customer Bitcoin balances reported one month earlier. Binance users added 25,838 BTC in May, lifting their total holdings by 4.26% to about 630,000 BTC in the exchange’s 43rd proof-of-reserves report.
The latest increase was smaller than the previous month’s gain, but it kept customer BTC balances moving higher. The report does not show whether the change came from purchases, deposits, transfers between Binance services, or movements from other assets. It records balances at one point in time rather than individual customer activity.
Ethereum and USDT balances decline Ethereum moved in the opposite direction after recording a strong increase in the previous report. Customer ETH holdings had risen 10.17% in May to about 4.14 million ETH. The July snapshot showed that the total fell by 58,591 ETH during June.
USDT balances also declined for a second monthly report. Binance users held about 34.3 billion USDT in the June 1 snapshot after balances fell by roughly 460 million tokens in May. The latest decrease brought the total to about 33.7 billion USDT. Lower stablecoin balances do not confirm that users converted USDT into Bitcoin or withdrew funds.
A similar pattern recently appeared at other major exchanges. As reported by crypto.news, Bybit and OKX recorded higher customer Bitcoin holdings while USDT balances fell in their latest reserve snapshots. However, the reports did not identify the reasons behind the balance changes.
Binance says customer assets remain backed Binance states on its proof-of-reserves page that it holds customer assets on a 1:1 basis, along with additional reserves. The exchange uses Merkle Trees and zero-knowledge proofs to let customers check whether their account balances were included in the total liabilities covered by each report.
A proof-of-reserves report can show whether listed wallets hold assets linked to customer balances at the time of a snapshot. However, it does not provide a complete financial audit or explain every off-chain liability. A recent proof-of-reserves explainer noted that useful disclosures should remain recent, frequent and matched against customer liabilities.
The figures should therefore be read as a record of asset backing and customer balances on a specific date. They do not show the exchange’s complete financial position or the reasons customers moved assets between accounts, platforms or private wallets.
Report follows braoder changes at Binance The latest reserve report arrived after a month of active derivatives trading. Binance recorded about $1.63 trillion in futures trading volume during June, its highest monthly total of 2026, according to CryptoQuant data.
Binance also introduced service changes for some European users when the European Union’s MiCA transition ended on July 1. As previously reported, the exchange said affected users could continue using options already communicated to them, including withdrawals where available. The date matched the snapshot used for the latest reserve report.
Earlier reserve rankings placed Binance ahead of other major exchanges. As reported by crypto.news, CoinMarketCap data ranked the platform first in January 2026 with about $155.6 billion in proof-of-reserve assets. The July report adds a new monthly view of customer balances, with BTC rising while ETH and USDT moved lower.
Čínská policie zadržela 63 podezřelých v kauze praní peněz přes Tether (USDT); podle úřadů šlo asi o 1,7 miliardy USD v kryptu. Pekingské regulátory zároveň znovu zakázaly neautorizované jüanové stablecoiny a většinu tokenizace aktiv z reálného světa.
China is ramping up its efforts to combat cryptocurrency-related crime, with institutions and prosecutors outlining new frameworks for prosecution and asset disposal as police continue to break up large money laundering rings.
Prosecutors seek new rules for crypto money laundering casesAn opinion article published in the Procuratorate Daily, the official newspaper of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, presents a detailed approach to tackling crypto-related money laundering in China. Authored by two district prosecutors from Hunan province and a university law professor, the article suggests that prosecutors often rely on broad “concealment” charges, as China’s existing money-laundering laws cover only seven predicate crimes, leaving crypto cases in a legal grey area.
The authors recommend adopting a “double investigation of one case” approach. This would involve screening every underlying crime for possible crypto-related laundering and mapping the flow of any digital assets involved. This proposal builds on a 2024 judicial interpretation from China’s Supreme People’s Court, which treats virtual-asset transactions used for moving criminal proceeds as a form of laundering.
To strengthen the evidentiary process, the article introduces the idea of using “blockchain data self-verification.” Under this principle, on-chain records that match public block explorer data would be regarded as legitimate unless proven otherwise. Reports from blockchain analytics companies, including fund tracing and address clustering, would serve as expert evidence. The article also supports the idea that circumstantial and fragmentary evidence can be acceptable if it presents a coherent narrative, even when not every coin is traced to its origin.
They propose that blockchain data, when verified using on-chain hash values and public explorers, should be assumed genuine unless disputed, while reports from blockchain analytics firms could serve as expert evidence in court.
Mini dictionary: Supreme People’s Procuratorate — This is China’s highest national agency responsible for legal prosecution and investigation of criminal offenses.
The article further addresses the challenge authorities face after seizing crypto assets. With China’s ban on trading, there is no legal method to convert seized tokens to fiat currency, leaving large sums effectively stranded.
Authorities push for official platform to manage seized cryptocurrenciesTo resolve the dilemma of disposing of seized digital assets, the article calls for the creation of a national platform dedicated to the custody and sale of confiscated cryptocurrencies through officially recognized channels, such as directed auctions. This system would rely on an expert committee to value assets accurately using both on-chain data and global exchange prices, and would potentially support cross-border cooperation to trace and recover assets moved abroad.
Currently, local government agencies have circumvented domestic trading bans by discreetly liquidating seized cryptocurrencies through external partners operating in overseas markets, a process previously documented by international agencies.
In 2024 alone, China’s prosecution authorities charged over 3,000 individuals with crypto-related money laundering activities, highlighting the scale of the issue and the urgency for legal reform.
China intensifies crackdown on yuan stablecoins and RWA tokenizationIn a separate move, China’s central bank and nine regulatory agencies issued a joint directive reaffirming the country’s tough stance against crypto activity. The notice, published on Friday, prohibits the creation of any yuan-linked stablecoin without regulatory approval and classifies most projects involving the tokenization of real-world assets as illegal. The statement warns that virtual currencies, stablecoins, and tokenized assets present systemic dangers to financial stability, repeating that cryptocurrencies have no status as legal tender and that trading, issuance, and brokerage activities tied to them are prohibited.
The new notice from China’s central bank, together with other regulators, explicitly bans the issuance of unapproved yuan-backed stablecoins and categorizes most real-world asset tokenization as unlawful.
Chinese police arrest group in $1.7 billion Tether laundering caseChinese law enforcement in Tonglio, a city in Inner Mongolia, announced the arrest of 63 suspects linked to a major Tether-based money laundering network. Authorities began their investigation when they detected unexplained deposits exceeding 10 million yuan at a local bank, prompting anti-money laundering procedures. Subsequent raids resulted in the seizure of 130 million yuan in cash and payment cards potentially connected to the laundering operations.
According to the official statement, the criminal group laundered around $1.7 billion in cryptocurrency, mostly using the Tether (USDT) stablecoin. Tether is a widely used US dollar-pegged digital asset, often used for cross-border transactions but also attracting scrutiny because of its utility in illicit activities.
Mini dictionary: Tether (USDT) — A leading stablecoin designed to maintain a 1-to-1 value with the US dollar, facilitating easy exchange and transfer of value across digital platforms.
Despite banning cryptocurrency trading and mining in 2021, China remains a global hotspot for crypto-based money laundering. Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics firm, estimates that Chinese-language laundering networks processed $16 billion worth of cryptocurrency in 2025 and now account for about 20% of global crypto money laundering. The company’s analysis links the continued prominence of such networks to China’s strict capital controls, as wealthy individuals looking to move assets offshore indirectly fuel laundering operations that also serve international crime syndicates.
YearEstimated Laundered Crypto AmountMajor Enforcement Action2022$1.7 billionMajor ring dismantled in China2024Over $1.7 billion63 suspects arrested, Mongolian city case2025 (projection)$16 billionChinese-language networks process 20% of global totalDisclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.
Hyundai Motor America a Hyundai Motor de México dokončily pilotní přeshraniční vypořádání v USD₮ přes Avalanche. V průměru trvalo sedm minut, oproti třem až čtyřem hodinám u běžných mezibankovních převodů.
Global Industrial Conglomerate Hyundai Completes Enterprise Treasury Pilot on Tether USD₮, Moving Corporate Funds Across Global Borders
13 July 2026 – Tether, the largest company in the digital asset industry and the issuer of USD₮, announces the successful completion of the first enterprise cross-border settlement Proof of Concept (POC) between Hyundai Motor America and Hyundai Motor de México through Axiym on the Avalanche blockchain network.
The initiative demonstrated that an enterprise cross-border transfer and verification process could be completed in an average of seven minutes, compared with traditional interbank transfers that typically require three to four hours or more.
As part of the first phase of the POC, Hyundai Motor America (HMA) converted USD 20,000 into USD₮, transferred the stablecoin to Hyundai Motor Mexico (HMM), and converted it back into U.S. dollars. The full process included international transfer and verification, highlighting how stablecoins can support cross-border settlement for global businesses.
While the pilot demonstrated the speed and efficiency of stablecoin-based settlement, it also reflects a broader shift in enterprise finance. The significance extends beyond the transaction itself: one of the world’s largest industrial companies is actively evaluating blockchain-based financial infrastructure for corporate treasury operations. As stablecoins move beyond crypto-native use cases, participation from global enterprises highlights growing interest in using digital dollars to support faster cross-border payments, treasury management, and capital movement.
This achievement builds on Tether’s existing strategic investment in Axiym and reaffirms Tether’s commitment to expanding enterprise and institutional use cases for USD₮ by supporting infrastructure purpose-built to enable compliant, scalable, and efficient global payment settlements. During the POC, Axiym’s regulated settlement infrastructure enabled the near-real-time movement of USD₮, demonstrating faster, more efficient cross-border settlement at enterprise scale.
The PoC went beyond the transaction itself, with Hyundai Card leading the design of the remittance structure and overseeing regulatory review, compliance considerations, accounting requirements, and the operational framework needed to evaluate stablecoin-based settlement between overseas subsidiaries.
As businesses expand across multiple jurisdictions, the ability to move capital quickly, transparently, and efficiently has become a strategic necessity. Stablecoins provide enterprises with a new way to streamline settlement, improve treasury management, and create more efficient global payment flows without compromising existing operational, governance, or compliance standards.
“Stablecoins are becoming a critical part of the next generation of global financial infrastructure,” said Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether. “Hyundai’s initiative shows the growing demand for financial infrastructure that can help enterprises to move value across borders with greater speed, efficiency, and transparency. USD₮ is helping bridge traditional finance and blockchain-based infrastructure, offering companies new tools to streamline settlement and unlock new ways to manage global operations effectively.”
The next phase of the initiative will explore additional cross-border corridors and local currency settlement, further evaluating how stablecoins can support broader enterprise payment and treasury workflows.
As global financial infrastructure continues to evolve, the conversation is no longer about whether stablecoins have meaningful real-world applications; it is about how quickly they will become embedded in the systems that power international commerce. Tether remains committed to supporting the technologies, infrastructure, and innovators accelerating that transformation.
Thajsko chce v rámci nové razie prověřovat transakce v USDT společně s regulátory cenných papírů. Zároveň zvažuje, že u hotovostních vkladů od 5 milionů bahtů bude nutné doložit původ peněz.
Thailand’s central bank is considering measures requiring anyone depositing 5 million baht ($150,000) or more in cash to prove the origin of the funds.
This is part of a fourth-quarter push that also puts Tether (USDT) transactions under a joint audit with securities regulators.
Why Thailand Is Watching USDTBank of Thailand (BOT) Governor Vitai Ratanakorn framed the measures as a strike against the country’s grey economy. The push, reported by Thansettakij, extends the central bank’s grey-money campaign to digital assets.
Vitai said in January that roughly 40% of USDT sellers on local platforms were foreigners. He argued they should not be operating in Thailand.
The BOT is now working with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to review unusually high-volume USDT trading. Authorities have identified transactions that may indicate disclosure avoidance or the movement of funds outside standard financial channels.
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Cash and Bullion Rules TightenThe deposit rule complements checks already applied to large withdrawals. Since April, cash withdrawals above 5 million baht have faced enhanced due diligence. The value of large cash withdrawals has since fallen 35%.
The BOT is reviewing the legal framework before issuing the deposit requirements.
“In addition, it is considering measures for high-value banknote exchanges — such as bringing in large quantities of 1,000-baht notes to exchange for 100- or 500-baht notes — which may require an explanation of the reason for the transaction,” the report read.
In addition, the BOT has tightened oversight of gold trading to limit its impact on the baht and detect suspicious activity.
“The measures we are implementing are not short-term fixes; they require the continuous deployment of multiple parallel strategies,” Governor Vitai said.
The coming quarter will test how far the BOT can extend its reach.
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Tether podle EmberCN poslal z rezervní adresy na Binance testovací transakci 4 BTC za zhruba 250 000 USD. Zároveň se po konci Q2 zatím neobjevily nové on-chain vklady BTC.
According to monitoring by EmberCN, Tether allocates 15% of its quarterly profits to its Bitcoin reserve address. Approximately 5 hours ago, this address made a test transfer of 4 BTC to Binance, valued at roughly $250,000. EmberCN stated that this same address previously transferred 204.3 BTC to Bitfinex a month ago, worth approximately $14.36 million at the time, when Bitcoin’s price stood at around $70,000. It remains unclear whether these assets have been sold. Additionally, Tether appears to have not yet completed the on-chain withdrawal of new Bitcoin for Q2 2026. Per its usual practice, Tether typically transfers BTC purchased in the quarter to its reserve address on the last day of each quarter. However, more than 10 days have elapsed since the end of Q2, and no new Bitcoin deposits to this reserve address have been observed on-chain, sparking market concerns over whether it has adjusted its Bitcoin accumulation pace.
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According to monitoring by Onchain Lens, a whale deposited approximately $450,000 into Hyperliquid. Within one hour of CASHCAT’s listing on Hyperliquid, the whale shorted 1.11 million CASHCAT tokens with 3x leverage, valued at $222,200. The entry price was $0.195336, liquidation price $0.531304, resulting in an unrealized loss of $4,400.
Per GMGN market data, CASHCAT, a meme coin on Robinhood Chain, briefly hit an all-time high in market capitalization, currently trading at $200 million with an intraday increase of over 20%. Meme coins are highly volatile, so investors should exercise caution regarding associated risks.
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According to Lookonchain monitoring, a trader has reaped over $1 million in profits from CASHCAT. The trader spent 0.49 ETH (valued at $838) to purchase 15.04 million CASHCAT tokens, then sold them for 580 ETH (worth $1.04 million), generating a profit of over $1 million (a 1183x return). Had the trader held the tokens until now, the profit would have reached $2.9 million.
Velryby hromadí Tether Gold (XAUT): za posledních 24 hodin zaznamenal čistý odtok z burz 17,4 milionu USD, asi 16násobek denního průměru. Abraxas Capital i další peněženky XAUT stahují do vlastní správy.
Crypto whales are accumulating gold again just as spot prices slide. Asset manager Abraxas Capital pulled millions in Tether Gold (XAUT) off exchanges this week, and on-chain data suggests it is not acting alone.
The whale activity comes as gold posts mixed results in July. Prices climbed early in the month, then slipped as US-Iran tensions escalated.
Gold’s Volatility Pushes Traders On-ChainAccording to Onchain Lens, investment firm Abraxas Capital withdrew approximately 3,931 XAUT, worth around $15.96 million, from four major exchanges.
The transfers included 760.244 XAUT ($3.09 million) from Bitfinex, 940.207 XAUT ($3.82 million) from OKX, 230 XAUT ($934,000) from Bybit, and 2,001 XAUT ($8.12 million) from Binance.
Lookonchain also reported that a whale wallet identified as 0xD20E resumed accumulating XAUT after a three-year hiatus. Over the past three days, the wallet withdrew 953 XAUT, valued at roughly $3.93 million, from Binance.
The broader exchange flow data reinforces the trend. Nansen data showed XAUT recorded $17.4 million in net exchange outflows over the past 24 hours, around 16 times its average daily level.
The momentum has also persisted over a longer period. Over the past seven days, XAUT registered net outflows of $34.1 million, more than four times its typical weekly pace.
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XAUT Exchange Outflows By Window, Source: BeInCrypto/NansenSuch sustained exchange withdrawals are generally viewed as a sign of accumulation, as investors moving tokens into self-custody are typically positioning for longer-term holding rather than immediate trading.
The trend is not limited to XAUT. As previously reported by BeInCrypto, Paxos Gold (PAXG) has also posted notable net exchange outflows, suggesting rising demand across tokenized gold assets.
Not All Signals Point UpThe picture is not one-sided. Nansen data shows a meaningful distribution alongside the buying. One holder sold about 2,900 XAUT in 24 hours, worth roughly $11.8 million. Another cut 757 tokens over the same period.
Top XAUT Holders 30-day Net Change, Source: BeInCrypto/NansenTwo of the largest tracked wallets, 0x77134c and 0x28c6c0, each shed more than 5,000 XAUT over 30 days. That selling tempers the bullish read on outflows.
Tether Gold tracks physical bullion, so its direction likely follows spot prices. The next Federal Reserve signal and geopolitical developments may decide whether whale buying holds.
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Tether spálil na síti Ethereum 2,5 miliardy USDT, což je jedno z největších jednorázových spálení za poslední měsíce. Zároveň klesly toky USDT přes Tron kanál Binance na zhruba 860 milionů.
Tether burned 2.5 billion USDT on the Ethereum network, marking one of the largest stablecoin supply reductions in recent months. According to CryptoQuant data, this was the largest single-day Ethereum-based USDT burn since the 3.5 billion USDT burn on February 10th.
Another notable development in the market was the sharp drop in USDT balances flowing in and out of Binance via the Tron network. According to the data, the USDT balance circulating through Binance’s Tron channel fell to approximately $860 million.
This level is the lowest recorded since the $391 million low seen on December 29, 2025. It also marks the first time in a long time that the balance has fallen below $1 billion.
Analysts note that Tether’s large-scale burn on Ethereum should not be interpreted as a direct signal regarding market direction.
Stablecoin issuers typically conduct such operations for purposes such as investor repayments, treasury management, reserve optimization, or cross-chain liquidity balancing. Therefore, the burning data alone may not necessarily indicate an expected rise or fall in the market.
However, it is noted that the decrease in the USDT supply on Ethereum and the simultaneous contraction of USDT liquidity in Binance’s Tron channel should be considered together. According to experts, the simultaneous occurrence of these two developments could send important signals, especially regarding exchange-based stablecoin flows and cross-chain liquidity distribution.
In the cryptocurrency market, stablecoin movements are closely watched as they offer important clues about investor behavior, exchange liquidity, and overall risk appetite. These recent developments involving Tether have also caught the attention of market participants.
*This is not investment advice.
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Strike spustil bitcoinem kryté půjčky bez margin callů a likvidací, přičemž riziko nese Tether, který za programem stojí přes úvěrovou linku v objemu 2,1 miliardy USD. Tether zároveň navrhuje sloučení Strike, Twenty One Capital a Elektron Energy do jedné platformy.
Strike’s new volatility-proof Bitcoin loans shift price risk from borrowers onto the lender’s capital providers. Tether supplies the $2.1 billion credit facility behind the program and co-designed the loan structure itself. A proposed merger would fold Strike, Twenty One Capital, and miner Elektron Energy into one Tether-linked platform. The combined stack covers every core banking function except the safety net regulated banks carry. The headline this week belongs to Strike. On July 7 the company launched Bitcoin-backed loans with no margin calls and no price liquidations, promising that collateral stays untouched no matter how far Bitcoin falls, as long as borrowers keep paying. Most coverage stopped there. The more consequential story sits one layer down, with the entity actually carrying the risk. A loan that never liquidates on price means somebody holds undercollateralized debt through every drawdown, and that somebody, directly and indirectly, is Tether. The merger proposal from April read as corporate maneuvering at the time. Yesterday’s launch is what it looks like in production: a stablecoin issuer assembling deposits, credit, energy, mining, and capital markets into a working bank for the Bitcoin economy. No banking license. No central bank behind it. No deposit insurance in front of it.
The loan Strike sells, the risk Tether keeps Strike’s volatility-proof structure only works with deep pockets behind it. A borrower posts $100,000 in BTC at the product’s 45% loan-to-value cap and takes $45,000 in cash. If Bitcoin then falls 60% and stays there, the collateral covers about $40,000 against a $45,000 debt. A conventional crypto lender would have sold at 85% LTV. This one waits, holding the shortfall until repayment or maturity.
That patience is a balance-sheet luxury, and the balance sheet providing it is not Strike’s. Jack Mallers announced a $2.1 billion credit facility that he said gives the company capacity to meet demand at any order size, and Tether co-developed the volatility-proof loan structure itself. Even Strike’s proof-of-reserves system, which lets borrowers verify their collateral at a segregated on-chain address, was built with Tether’s help. Strike originates and services. Tether underwrites the tail risk. Traditional finance has a name for this division of labor: the originator model, the same architecture mortgage banks run with their warehouse lenders.
Six of seven banking functions, already in place Take the classic functions of a commercial bank and check them against what Tether now touches. The gaps are few.
Banking function Tether’s version Scale Deposits USDT in circulation Largest stablecoin by supply Lending Own CeFi loan book + Strike credit facility $2.1B facility; top-3 CeFi lender Payments & custody Strike (proposed merger) 95+ countries Reserves / treasury Twenty One Capital BTC treasury Top-tier corporate BTC holder Physical infrastructure Elektron Energy mining (proposed merger) ~50 EH/s, ~5% of network hashrate Capital markets Planned securitization arm Loan-book and mining revenue debt Lender of last resort None – Tether Investments published a proposal to merge Twenty One Capital with Strike and Elektron Energy, a mining operator managing roughly 50 EH/s, about 5% of Bitcoin’s network hashrate, into a single listed platform integrating treasury holdings, mining, financial services, lending, and capital markets. Mallers endorsed it from the stage at Bitcoin 2026. “Simply put, I think it’s a great idea,” he said, adding that his founding goal was always a Bitcoin company rather than a payments app.
Terms and timelines remain undisclosed, but the machinery is moving: in June, Tether designated an additional independent director to XXI’s board to restore the audit committee to SEC and NYSE independence standards, the kind of housekeeping that precedes a transaction, not one that follows a dead deal.
Mallers described an operation built around loan-book securitization, mining revenue securitization, Bitcoin-backed debt, and structured products. Packaging loans into securities and selling them onward is how banks recycle capital and lend beyond their own balance sheets. Nobody in crypto has run that machine at size. A merged Tether-Strike entity would be the first with both the origination volume and the distribution to try.
Three lenders now hold 89% of a market that used to have ten The crypto credit market recovered from 2022 with far fewer players. According to Galaxy Research data, the three largest centralized lenders, Tether among them alongside Galaxy and Ledn, hold combined loan books of $9.9 billion, close to 89% of the CeFi lending market. Tether sits at the top of that group with its own book, and now also funds the most aggressive product structure in the industry through Strike.
The pre-collapse era looked different. Celsius, BlockFi, Voyager, and Genesis competed for the same borrowers, and when they fell, the survivors absorbed the clients and the market kept functioning. The 2026 market has no such redundancy. One dominant creditor now stands behind deposits (USDT), wholesale credit (the Strike facility), and soon, if the merger completes, a meaningful slice of the mining hardware securing the network itself. Bank supervisors have a term for an institution whose failure would cascade through every layer of its system. Crypto has quietly grown one without anyone signing off on the designation.
To be fair to the other side of the ledger: Tether reports billions in annual profit from reserve yields, which gives it more loss-absorbing capacity than any pre-2022 crypto lender ever had. The company can genuinely afford to sit on underwater loans through a bear market. That is exactly what makes the no-liquidation promise credible today. It is also what makes the arrangement fragile in the one scenario that counts. A shock hitting Tether itself, whether from reserves, regulation, or redemption pressure, would now propagate simultaneously into stablecoin markets, the CeFi loan book, Strike’s borrowers, and a mining fleet. Banks carry deposit insurance and central bank liquidity lines for precisely this correlation problem. This structure carries neither.
Ledn and Unchained now need a $2 billion backstop of their own For borrowers, none of this is visible. Loans get approved, Bitcoin stays put, and the plumbing behind the $2.1 billion never surfaces in the app. The market feels it differently. Competing lenders like Ledn and Unchained still run LTV-triggered liquidation models, and matching Strike’s no-liquidation terms would require a capital partner willing to eat drawdowns measured in years, not hours. Few candidates exist. The likely outcome is consolidation around whoever has the largest balance sheet, which is the opposite of what a market still scarred by 2022 says it wants.
Bitcoin’s spot price mechanics change too. Forced liquidations have amplified every major sell-off since 2018 by dumping collateral onto exchanges at the worst possible moment. Loans that never sell on price remove one of those feedback loops. The selling pressure does not vanish; it converts into credit exposure sitting on Tether-linked balance sheets, waiting.
The open question lands on regulators’ desks, not traders’ screens. U.S. stablecoin legislation focused on reserve quality and redemption rights, not on what an issuer’s investment arm does with its profits. Lending billions against volatile collateral through affiliated platforms sits outside that perimeter entirely, and European supervisors under MiCA face the same gap. The proposed merger, which would put Elektron founder Raphael Zagury in the president’s seat of a listed entity combining all these pieces, will eventually force a decision: at what point does the Bitcoin economy’s largest private creditor become subject to something resembling bank supervision, and who moves first, Washington or Brussels?
Tether vedla strategické financování Mercado Bitcoin v objemu 20 milionů USD, aby urychlila budování on-chain finanční infrastruktury v Latinské Americe.
Tether Backs Mercado Bitcoin With $20 Million@Tether has led a $20 million strategic financing round in Mercado Bitcoin, the São Paulo-based digital asset platform, to accelerate the build-out of on-chain financial infrastructure across Latin America. The deal signals a broader push by Tether to deploy capital into emerging-market blockchain rails, following a string of similar investments in recent months.
The funding will support the migration of payments, credit, and capital markets onto blockchain infrastructure. Mercado Bitcoin brings an established footprint to the partnership: the platform serves over 4 million clients across 12 years of operation, operates as a cryptocurrency exchange, asset tokenization company, and digital bank, and is Brazil's first crypto unicorn. According to the original announcement, the user base has since grown to 4.5 million.
Regulatory Licenses and Tokenized Asset AmbitionsA key part of the investment rationale is Mercado Bitcoin's regulatory standing. The company holds over 10 licenses across Brazil and Europe, including a Payment Institution license from the Banco Central do Brasil, giving it a regulated framework from which to offer on-chain financial products at scale.
The capital also supports R2B, Mercado Bitcoin's tokenized asset issuance arm. Since launching its asset tokenization unit, MB Tokens, the São Paulo-based exchange has issued more than 340 tokenized products, including tokenized private credit, fixed-income instruments, and revenue-sharing products. The platform ranks as the number one real-world asset token issuer in Brazil and fifth globally.
The investment fits a broader pattern for Tether. Tether Investments functions as an independent arm, deploying capital from Tether's profits into technology and infrastructure. The stablecoin issuer has been active across several deals in 2026, directing funds into Bitcoin infrastructure and financial services platforms globally.
For Mercado Bitcoin, fresh capital from one of the digital asset industry's most prominent names adds both funding and credibility as it competes to position Latin America as a leading region for regulated, on-chain finance. The tokenization of real-world assets is projected to surge from approximately $0.6 trillion in 2025 to nearly $19 trillion by 2033, according to a report by Ripple and Boston Consulting Group.
Sources:
CoinDesk: Mercado Bitcoin to Tokenize $200M in Real-World Assets
Tether.io: Tether Investments Strategy Overview
Tether, the company behind USDT, is preparing to issue the stablecoin natively on Bitcoin through the RGB protocol version v0.11.1. Deployed by the UTEXO software lab, USDT is set to return to the chain where it first launched in 2014 via the Omni-Mastercoin Layer.
UTEXO, the company leading the commercial rollout, has positioned itself as the issuer and distributor of this Bitcoin-native USDT in partnership with Tether. “Finally, after eight years of development—if not more—we are the company that is launching USDT over Bitcoin with strong support from Tether,” said Viktor Ihnatiuk, UTEXO co-founder, in an exclusive interview with Bitcoin Magazine.
The RGB protocol combines its novel client-side validation with the Lightning network for instant, private settlements, while anchoring security to Bitcoin’s UTXO model. Users can expect to be able to handle USDT on native Bitcoin addresses as well as send and receive it over the Lightning network with compatible wallets.
The RGB protocol on Bitcoin also offers significant privacy features to USDT users as the asset benefits from Bitcoin’s UTXO model, which standardizes fresh addresses for every transaction compared to the account-based address reused commonly in EVM blockchains like Tron, Ethereum or Solana. Address reuse is the first mistake of onchain privacy, yet most altcoins built their interfaces to reuse addresses, despite the risk it poses to users. RGB’s integration with the Lightning network further protects user privacy by moving USDT via the offchain payments network, which leaves few marks on the public blockchain. The deep integration with Tether also means that there are fewer middleman companies charging extra fees or collecting data.
On the topic, Vktor emphasized that, “We built Utexo so that USDT could move on Bitcoin the way money is supposed to move: instantly, privately, with no surprises on costs. Our partners integrate our API once and can route USDT on the most resilient open network ever built, with full control over cost structure.”
UTEXO vs TRON UTEXO emerged from a joint venture involving Viktor’s Boosty Venture Studio, Fulgur Ventures, and Tether Investments. The goal was straightforward: bring RGB to mainnet after years of delays under prior development teams. The protocol had been in active development since at least 2016, but failed to be ready for the 2017 bull market, giving the TRON blockchain dominance over USDT volume and usage throughout the developing world, a dominance which it still retains.
UTEXO of specifically building “the last mile” of software needed for wide USDT deployment across the Bitcoin ecosystem, which includes a software development kit, APIs, mid-level protocols, UI design work and even a mint bridge that is live today at mint.utexo.com. This bridge lets users move USDT across popular blockchains with “deterministic low fees” and no middlemen thanks to its direct integration with Tether as the primary mint. The RGB protocol layer was developed by Bitfinex R&D Strategist Federico Tenga.
“Right now if you want to swap USDT to Bitcoin you need to pay high fees for all these wallets who charge you a one percent wallet fee plus a swap provider charge of one percent plus, and you have slippage one percent as well, so you pay three percent, and also you wait forever until the swap happens” Viktor told Bitcoin Magazine, adding that; “with USDT and Bitcoin over Lightning, for the first time you have two main assets on one chain, you can swap instantly without any slippage. You can swap decentralized USDT to Bitcoin and back on-chain. The price is almost the same as spot markets in Binance.”
Networks like Tron that are primarily used to move USDT also add extra fees, swap commissions and friction to the user experience. They require a different address type, with fees paid in an asset like TRX, which is only ever used to move the stablecoin. With most of the monetary volume in the crypto market concentrated in Bitcoin and Tether, having to buy an altcoin just to pay fees ends up feeling like red tape.
Bitcoin, as the payment rails of USDT, also comes with blockchain levels of security that other chains simply can not offer. While USDT will always be fundamentally centralized in Tether as a corporation, the rails can also add risk, for example, if a contentious fork occurs or major bugs are found on novel blockchain systems. Bitcoin, being the oldest and most conservative blockchain, delivers a quality assurance of sorts that can not be matched by other chains.
RGB traces its roots to Peter Todd’s single-use seals back in 2014 and was formalized in 2016 by Giacomo Zucco and Riccardo Casatta. The RGB acronym, originally derived from “Riccardo Giacomo Bitcoin,” was later rebranded “Really Good Bitcoin”. Tether explored the protocol early but faced delays with the previous team. Had RGB shipped on schedule around 2019, the stablecoin landscape and broader DeFi industry might have developed differently around Bitcoin’s UTXO model instead of Ethereum’s account-based system.
As such, bringing USDT back to Bitcoin is a core motivation for UTEXO. Viktor minced no words on the matter: “For the first time in eight years or nine years, USDT is coming back home. We have no chance to fail. If we fail, no one will think about Bitcoin as a settlement layer anymore.”
USDT on Bitcoin via RGB is expected to be launched within weeks, possibly this July, with wallets like Tether Wallet among others announcing support, and exchanges across the world announcing integrations.
Raphael Zagury, Tether’s former chief investment officer, is looking to sell his stake in the company behind the world’s largest stablecoin. The move would mark a rare liquidity event for an insider at one of crypto’s most profitable and opaque enterprises.
The planned sale arrives at an interesting moment. Tether has reportedly been exploring capital raises in the range of $15 billion to $20 billion, with potential valuations stretching as high as $500 billion.
A quiet exit from a loud company Zagury’s departure from Tether’s C-suite preceded this planned stake sale. After serving as CIO, he pivoted to leading Bitcoin mining initiatives through Elektron Energy, a venture that aligns with Tether’s own expanding footprint in mining operations.
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The specifics of the sale, including the size of the stake, potential buyers, and timeline, remain unclear.
When a former top executive at a company sitting on more than $187 billion in reported assets decides to sell, the market pays attention. Tether doesn’t trade on public markets. It doesn’t file quarterly earnings with the SEC. The only real window into its financials comes from periodic attestation reports and the occasional headline. A stake sale, even a private one, forces some level of price discovery.
The Tether empire keeps expanding Under CEO Paolo Ardoino, who took the top job in late 2023 after serving as CTO, Tether has been on an aggressive expansion tear. The company’s reserve assets are primarily held in US Treasuries.
Tether has made equity investments in firms like Rumble, the video platform, and Bit2Me, a European crypto exchange. It has pushed deeper into Bitcoin mining. And it has explored potential mergers tied to treasury operations and mining infrastructure.
Tether’s parent company, iFinex, retains considerable voting power in affiliated entities. That governance structure means even as individual stakeholders like Zagury look to cash out, operational control likely stays concentrated among a small group of decision-makers.
What this means for investors A $500 billion valuation would make Tether more valuable than all but a handful of US banks. Whether the market ultimately supports that number depends heavily on regulatory outcomes. US stablecoin legislation has been working its way through Congress, and the final shape of those rules will determine whether Tether can continue operating with its current level of autonomy or faces new compliance burdens that crimp margins.
The broader stablecoin competitive landscape is heating up. Circle, the issuer of USDC, has been pursuing its own public listing. PayPal already launched PYUSD. Every new entrant chips away at the argument that Tether’s dominance is permanent, even if USD₮ currently commands the lion’s share of stablecoin market capitalization.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Bývalý investiční ředitel Tetheru Richard Heathcote chce prodat část svého 1,26% podílu v emitentovi stablecoinů. Podle Bloombergu jde jen o část jeho vlastnictví.
Former Tether chief investment officer Richard Heathcote is seeking to sell part of his 1.26% stake in the stablecoin issuer, according to a Bloomberg report citing people familiar with the matter.
Heathcote stepped down as Tether's chief investment officer in March to take an advisory role after overseeing the stablecoin issuer's investment portfolio. Bloomberg reported the planned sale involves only part of his 1.26% ownership stake.
Tether issues USDt (USDT), the world's largest stablecoin by market capitalization. With a circulating supply of roughly $184 billion, USDT accounts for roughly 59% of the stablecoin market, according to DefiLlama data.
The planned sale could offer a rare look at ownership in Tether, which remains privately held despite becoming one of the crypto industry's most profitable companies.
The sale also comes as Tether navigates regulatory pressure in Europe. USDT has been delisted by a growing number of MiCA-authorized platforms after Tether opted not to comply with the European Union's crypto framework, with Revolut announcing this month that it will remove the stablecoin from its platform.
Crypto companies weigh IPOs While Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino has said outright that the stablecoin issuer does not need to go public, several other crypto companies are reportedly mulling initial public offerings (IPOs).
Kraken has taken several steps toward a public listing. Fortune reported in September 2025 that the crypto exchange had raised $500 million at a $15 billion valuation, fueling expectations that the exchange was preparing for an IPO.
Source: Paolo Ardoino
The company also announced it had confidentially filed a draft registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering in November 2025. However, Bloomberg later reported that the IPO plans could be pushed back until 2027 following layoffs tied to the company's expanding use of artificial intelligence.
South Korean crypto exchange Bithumb also announced in April that it is delaying its IPO until after 2028 as it works to strengthen its accounting policies and internal controls following earlier regulatory setbacks.
Magazine: The end of anonymity? AI could unmask crypto’s hidden identities
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
Podle dat Visa drželo USDC v první polovině roku 2026 asi 70 % upraveného objemu transakcí stablecoinů, zatímco USDT měl zhruba 25 %. Upravený měsíční objem v červnu dosáhl rekordu 1,79 bilionu USD.
Visa stablecoin data shows fiat-pegged token monthly activity increased to a record $1.79 trillion in June. ((Media/Visa)Summary
Circle’s USDC accounted for about 70 percent of adjusted stablecoin transaction volume in the first half of 2026, widening its lead over Tether’s USDT, which held roughly 25 percent.Adjusted stablecoin transaction volume hit a record $1.79 trillion in June 2026, up 63 percent from May and 125 percent from June 2025, contributing to $8.82 trillion in volume for the first six months of the year.Growing adoption of stablecoins by banks and financial institutions, including new USDC services from Standard Chartered and BNY, reflects a broader shift toward established fiat-pegged digital asset networks.Circle’s USDC stablecoin widened its lead over competitor Tether’s USDT by transaction volume during the first half of 2026, according to fresh data from Visa’s onchain dashboard.
In June alone, stablecoin activity increased to a record $1.79 trillion in adjusted transaction volume, up 63% from May's $1.1 trillion and 125% from about $795 billion in June 2025. Visa removes bot activity, exchange transfers and other blockchain transactions that do not reflect real economic activity before calculating adjusted volume.
These figures come as banks and other financial institutions expand their use of stablecoins for payments, settlement and treasury operations. Standard Chartered and BNY recently added services around Circles’s USDC rather than building their own infrastructure which also reflects a broader shift toward using established stablecoin networks as activity and demand for fiat-pegged digital assets increases.
The first six months of the year totaled $8.82 trillion in adjusted stablecoin transaction volume. That is more than the $5.8 trillion recorded during all of 2024 and $2 trillion less than the record $10.8 trillion reported in 2025.
USDC accounted for about 70% of adjusted transaction volume during the first half of 2026. USDT represented roughly 25%..
In 2020, USDT made up nearly 90% of adjusted transaction volume. USDC accounted for less than 10%. By 2022, USDC accounted for about 45% of adjusted transaction volume.
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Building the Zcash Machine: Tachyon and Quantum Readiness
Building the Zcash Machine: Tachyon and Quantum Readiness
Zcash’s Tachyon upgrade aims to scale shielded payments, improve quantum readiness, and test whether its funding, security, and governance can hold.
Jun 30, 2026
Zcash’s Tachyon upgrade aims to scale shielded payments, improve quantum readiness, and test whether its funding, security, and governance can hold.
Why it matters:
Zcash’s Tachyon upgrade aims to scale shielded payments, improve quantum readiness, and test whether its funding, security, and governance can hold.
Tether spustil Alloy, syntetický dolar aUSDT krytý Tether Gold (XAUt) místo hotovostních rezerv. Jde o další krok stablecoinů mimo čistě dolarové krytí.
Tether has launched Alloy, a synthetic dollar product backed by Tether Gold, in a move that pushes the stablecoin issuer further beyond simple dollar tokens.
For more details, visit the official Tether platform.
TL;DR Tether has introduced Alloy and its aUSDT synthetic dollar product.The product is backed by Tether Gold (XAUt) rather than traditional cash reserves.The launch shows stablecoin design expanding into new forms of collateral. Most stablecoin stories are about whether a token is backed by dollars, Treasuries, or bank deposits. Alloy is different. It is designed around over-collateralization with liquid gold exposure, creating a synthetic dollar instrument rather than another straightforward fiat-backed token.
Why Gold-Backed Dollars Are Interesting Tether already dominates the conventional stablecoin market with USDT. Alloy suggests the company wants to build a wider collateral platform, where users can hold exposure that behaves like a dollar product while being backed by tokenized gold.
That is a more complex promise than a standard stablecoin. It introduces collateral-price dynamics, liquidation mechanics, and a different risk profile. It also shows why stablecoin issuers are becoming more like financial infrastructure companies than single-product crypto firms.
The Risk Is In The Design The appeal is clear: users get a dollar-denominated asset tied to gold collateral, potentially blending the familiarity of stablecoin units with a different reserve base. The caution is just as clear. Synthetic products need users to understand how collateral, redemptions, and market stress interact.
For Tether, Alloy is a way to test how far its brand can stretch. USDT is the liquidity engine. XAUt is the commodity-backed asset. aUSDT tries to connect the two into something more programmable. Whether traders embrace it will depend less on the headline and more on how it behaves when markets are not calm.
This article is based on information from Tether.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
