Crypto Scholar

Tether

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TETHER (USDT)

Current Market Price

$ 1.00
0.00003701 BTC
Marketcap
$ 79,130,471,493
Volume (24h)
$ 28,920,345,725
Circulating Supply
79,180,415,495 USDT
Total Supply
79,180,415,495 USDT

What is Tether?

USDT is a stablecoin (stable-value cryptocurrency) that is issued by a Hong Kong-based company called Tether which maintains an identical price to the U.S. dollar. The token’s peg to the USD is achieved via maintaining a sum of commercial paper, fiduciary deposits, cash, reserve repo notes, and treasury bills in reserves that is equal in USD value to the number of USDT in circulation.

Originally, USDT launched in July 2014 as Realcoin, a second-layer cryptocurrency token built on top of Bitcoin’s blockchain by using the Omni platform. Later it was renamed to USTether and then, finally, to USDT. USDT was later updated to work on the Ethereum, EOS, Tron, Algorand, OMG blockchains, plus others.

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


 


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Tether FAQs

USDT, Realcoin at the time, was launched in 2014 by Brock Pierce, Reeve Collins and Craig Sellars .

Brock Pierce is a well-known entrepreneur who has co-founded a number of high-profile projects in the crypto and entertainment industries. In 2013, he co-founded a venture capital firm Blockchain Capital, which by 2017 had raised over $80 million in funding. In 2014, Pierce became the director of the Bitcoin Foundation which is a nonprofit established by the community to help improve and promote Bitcoin. Pierce has also co-founded Block.one, the company behind EOS, one of the largest cryptocurrencies on the market.

Reeve Collins was the CEO of Tether for the first two years of its existence. Prior to that, he had co-founded several successful companies, such as the online ad network Traffic Marketplace, entertainment studio RedLever and gambling website Pala Interactive.

Craig Sellars has been a member of the Omni Foundation for over six years. Its Omni Protocol allows users to create and trade smart-contract based properties and currencies on top of Bitcoin’s blockchain. Sellars has also worked in several other cryptocurrency companies and organizations, such as Bitfinex, Factom, Synereo and the MaidSafe Foundation.

USDT is unique compared to other cryptocurrencies because its value is guaranteed by Tether to remain pegged to the U.S. dollar. According to Tether, whenever it issues new USDT tokens, it allocates the same amount of USD to its reserves, this ensures that USDT is fully backed by cash and cash equivalents.

The high volatility of the crypto markets makes other cryptocurrencies unreliable stores of value because they can rise or fall by 10-20% within a single day. By being pegged to the US Dollar, USDT is immune from these fluctuations.

However, over the years, there have been a number of controversies regarding the validity of Tether’s claims about their USD reserves, at times disrupting USDT’s price, which went down as low as $0.88 at one point in its history. Many have raised concerns about the fact that Tether’s reserves have never been fully audited by an independent third party. Read more about the controversy in our knowledge base.

There is no hard-coded limit on the total supply of USDT, However, because Tether claims that every single USDT is supposed to be backed by one U.S. dollar, the amount of tokens is limited by the company’s actual cash reserves. Tether does not disclose its issuance schedules ahead of time. Instead, they provide daily transparency reports, listing the total amount of their asset reserves and liabilities, the latter corresponding to the amount of USDT in circulation which can be found here. As of today, there are over 79,180,415,495 USDT USDT tokens in circulation, which are backed by assets, according to Tether’s Transparency report.

USDT does not have its own blockchain but instead operates as a second-layer token on top of other cryptocurrencies’ blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, EOS, Tron, Algorand, Bitcoin Cash and OMG. This means that it is secured by the respective cryptocurrencies’ hashing algorithm like PoW or PoS.

Becauase Tether does not have its own network, it gains the benefits and upgrades it obtains from the chain that it’s on. Even though Tether is a privately owned company they cannot just create more Tether on demand. Proof of Solvency, Proof of Reserves, Real­Time Transparency, and other similar phrases have been growing and resonating across the cryptocurrency industry. Tether’s Proof of Reserves configuration is novel because it simplifies the process of proving that the total number of tethers in circulation (liabilities) are always fully backed by an equal amount of fiat currency held in reserve (assets). In Tethers configuration, each tetherUSD in circulation represents one US dollar held in our reserves, a one to one ratio, which means the system is fully reserved when the sum of all tethers in existence (at any point in time) is exactly equal to the balance of USD held in the reserve. Since tethers live on the Bitcoin blockchain, the provability and accounting of tethers at any given point in time is trivial.

Tether’s USDT is currently the largest stablecoin in the industry, with a market capitalization of $ 79,130,471,493. The coin is also ranked as the fourth-largest cryptocurrency, according to data from CoinGecko.

At the moment, USDT operates on 14 blockchains, including Ethereum, Solana, Algorand, Omni, and Binance Smart Chain (BSC), among others.

Tether is considering going live on more DLT networks in the near future. In April of 2021 Tether indicated intentions to launch USDT on Polkadot and Kusama blockchains to take advantage of the networks’ parachain features.

It is possible to buy Tether on any number of cryptocurrency exchanges. In fact, USDT’s average daily trading volume is often on par or even exceeds that of Bitcoin. It is especially prominent on those exchanges where fiat-to-crypto trading pairs are unavailable, as it provides a viable alternative to USD.

Some of the top markets where BTC trading is available are:

Binance (Binance.US if in USA)

Coinbase & Coinbase Pro

Gemini

Kraken

Huobi Global

Bitfinex

FTX

Bithumb

Gate.io

Still not sure which exchange to use? Check out Crypto Scholars guide on the top cryptocurrency exchanges and how to register for each one.

The most popular wallets for cryptocurrency include both hot and cold wallets. Cryptocurrency wallets vary from hot wallets and cold wallets. Hot wallets are able to be connected to the web, while cold wallets are used for keeping large amounts of coins outside of the internet.

Some of the top crypto cold wallets are Trezor and Ledger. Some of the top crypto hot wallets include Exodus, Electrum and Mycelium.

Still not sure of which wallet to use? Check out Crypto Scholars guide on the top cold wallets of 2021 and top hot wallets of 2021.

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