What is USDT?

Crypto Whaler
3 min readJun 12, 2021

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What is USDT? Tether

Overview:

Tether USDT is one of the most widely used crypto stablecoin by traders and institutions. Tether is pegged to a fiat dollar thus immunizing it against bitcoin and other crypto price fluctuations. Liquidity is the major reasons why traders and investors prefer this, it’s one of the most liquid cryptocurrency. Besides being the largest stablecoin, it’s also one of the largest cryptocurrencies by a market cap of $62,612,286,879 and currently at 3rd spot in the crypto regime.

In 2012 J.R. Willet proposed the idea of building a new currency on the bitcoin protocol, ultimately leading to the development of Mastercoin utilizing bitcoin blockchain. Mastercoin became the foundation for Tether, some members from the same company initiated a startup called Realcoin in 2014. Realcoin used the same second layer technology called Omni Layer protocol, later that same year Realcoin became Tether.

The Sister company of Tether, Bitfinex assures that every tether is always 100% backed by their reserves.

Tether exists on several different blockchains, as of now the token is on Omni Bitcoin, Tron, EOS and Ethereum. Tokens on every chain inherit the property of its hosting blockchain and thus attract a wide range of investors. Investors may prefer the Bitcoin Omni version of Tether for maximum security and immutability, others might prefer ERC-20 since it can be used in DeFi for earning a passive income.

ERC-20 is the most popular flavour of Tether after surpassing the Omni version in the number of transactions in the year 2019. This is sometimes blamed to be the cause of high transaction fees and congestion on the Ethereum network. USDT is built on two more smart-contract oriented blockchains, Tron and EOS.

Use cases:

A strong bridge:

USDT is a fusion of FIAT and crypto and inherits the best traits of both, speed and flexibility of crypto trust and value of FIAT. Traders love USDT for its low fees and strong stability in the volatile world of crypto.

A strong player in traditional cross-border payment:

USDT is an emerging class of crypto assets that is beginning to find its use cases beyond the world of trading, including in sectors like cross-border payment. As per a news source, millions in Tether is crossing the Russia-China Border daily since 2019.

Strengths:

Most popular stablecoin:

If not most, Tether is definitely one of the most popular stablecoin out there. With strong community and utility, it’s here to stay and won’t be dusted away any time soon.

Strong integrations, Institutional support:

Tether offers efficiency and transparency benefits of cryptocurrency while strong protection from price volatility. This has been a №1 reason for institutional investors to use USDT to fulfil their orders instead of FIAT pairs. Besides institutional investment, Tether has some of the strongest integration with leading tech giants.

Exchange listings:

Tether is supported by nearly all exchanges, even the largest and most trusted exchanges have it as a primary trading pair.

Weaknesses:

It’s under the control of a centralized body

USDT is completely centralized around one company. Users are bound to completely trust this single point of failure. Additionally, there have been numerous reports of the company lying about its “one-to-one US dollar backing.”

Whitepaper:

Tether: Fiat currencies on the Bitcoin blockchain

https://tether.to/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/TetherWhitePaper.pdf

Related pages:

Website: https://tether.to/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tether_to/

Where to Buy:

WazirX: https://wazirx.com/invite/qqkfgn43

Binance: https://www.binance.com/en-IN/register?ref=108677502

Disclaimer:

We do not guarantee the reliability of the app and site content and shall not be held liable for any errors, omissions, or inaccuracies. The content provided is for information purposes only and does not constitute endorsements of any products, services or advice. Consult professionals prior to making financial decisions on any platform.

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