CryptoComes Original Article
CTO of Tether and Bitfinex Paolo Ardoino showed how his product reached the largest stablecoin capitalization ever. Now cryptocurrencies market participants are utilizing $15 bln Tethers (USDT) issued across all sorts of blockchains.
Massive milestone for Tether and crypto
Today, Sept. 17, Paolo Ardoino, chief technology officer of Bitfinex cryptocurrencies exchange and Tether Limited stablecoins issuer, has shared news of an impressive achievement by USDT stablecoin. Its total active supply has surpassed 15 bln USDT, which is equal to $15 bln in market capitalization.
1/4@Tether_to reached 15B+!! 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵 💵
— Paolo Ardoino (@paoloardoino) September 17, 2020
A thread of success
20/02/19: 4 billion
11/03/20: 5 billion (20 days)
26/03/20: 6 billion (15 days)
18/04/20: 7 billion (23 days)
6/05/20: 8 billion (18 days)
25/05/20: 9 billion (19 days)
Mr. Ardoino stressed how much momentum USDT market cap has gained during the ongoing bullish season of the crypto segment. He claims that the progress of USDT reflects the entire progress of cryptocurrencies as a store of value and trading instrument:
Ok, now this is mind blowing and great proxy representation of the growth of #crypto ecosystem. 0 to 5 billion: took 5 years, 5 to 10 billion: took 102 days, 10 to 15 billion: took 54 days
What's next?
Initially, U.S. Dollar Tether was launched in top of Omni, the solution that leverages Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain capacity. Today, its supply is distributed between Omni, Ethereum (ETH), Tron (TRX), Eos (EOS) and Algorand (ALGO) blockchains.
It also utilizes second-layer solutions, e.g., the Bitcoin (BTC) side-chain Liquid Network and Simple Ledger solution by Bitcoin Cash (BCH). However, almost 90 percent of Tether (USDT) is issued on Ethereum (ETH) and Tron (TRX).
Tether (USDT) supply surges amidst lawsuits
Furthermore, Tether Limited has shared plans to expand into Solana (SOL), a new generation blockchain platform, well known for its high speed and trivial transactional costs.
Meanwhile, Tether and Bitfinex are struggling with endless lawsuits. Groups of claimants accuse them of market manipulations and issuing "unbacked" Tethers (USDT) on top of the 2017 Bitcoin (BTC) craze. As covered by CryptoComes previously, Tether's lawyers repeatedly dismissed all accusations.
Besides an increasing circulating supply, Tether has released meaningful technological novelties. USDT was the first stablecoin that launched on top of Ethereum's Plasma solution built by OMG Network (formerly OmiseGo).
Also, Tether is experimenting with another Ethereum scalability solution, ZK-rollups. Both Plasma and ZK-rollups are reducing pressure on the Ethereum (ETH) mainnet to deal with high gas costs and network congestion.
