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Eight years after Tether issued its first USDT token on Oct. 6, 2014, the company could claim to have seen it all: allegations of price manipulation, regulatory legal fights, and repeated FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) attacks.
Through it all, USDT continued to grow, becoming the world’s largest stablecoin with over $68 billion in assets. USDT, also known as Tether, is a cryptocurrency that its founders say is 100% backed by liquid assets such as cash or Treasury bills.
Stablecoin pioneer
USDT is pegged one-to-one against the U.S. dollar. That means it could theoretically remain stable even during periods of volatility – hence the name stablecoin. The invention by Tether has become an important aspect of the crypto ecosystem.
“To date, stablecoins have served as a necessary offramp that has been used by traders to move quickly in and out of positions and provide a stable unit of account for settling crypto payments,” Paolo Ardoino, chief technology officer of Tether, told Be[In]Crypto.
“Tether holds a strong, conservative, and liquid portfolio. Its quarterly assurance attestations by independent accountants [prove] all tethers are fully backed and reserved. Those reserves have also been stress-tested. Importantly, it has never refused a redemption to a customer.”
Originally known as “Realcoin”, USDT was founded eight years ago by Brock Pierce, Craig Sellars, and Reeve Collins. The first USDT tokens were issued on Oct. 6, 2014, on the Omni layer on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. Now, it is spread across 14 chains.
According to Coinmarketcap, Tether spawned a stablecoin market now valued at more than $148 billion. Itself, USDT reached a total of $450,000 coins in circulation within one year from launch, and then $7 million a year later, the company said in a blog post.
By end of 2018, the total number of issued USDT hit the equivalent of $2 billion, rising 2,900% to more than $60 billion by end of 2021. Tether has become the primary stablecoin against which the majority of crypto assets are traded in both spot and futures markets.
Most derivative products in decentralized finance, or DeFi, are priced against USDT. In terms of daily trading volume, tether dominates. It accounted for over 76% o
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