Tether (USDT) - a stablecoin that reflects the price of the US dollar, issued by the Hong Kong company Tether. Initially launched in July 2014 as Realcoin, a second-level cryptocurrency token, built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, using the Omni platform, it was later renamed to USTether and finally to USDT.
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Founders of Tether
The goal of USDT - to combine the unlimited nature of cryptocurrencies that can be sent between users with the stable value of the US dollar. USDT or Realcoin as it was called at the time - was launched in 2014 by Brock Pierce, Reeve Collins and Craig Sellars.
| Brock Pierce | A well-known entrepreneur who co-founded a number of high-profile projects in the crypto and entertainment industries. In 2013, he co-founded the Blockchain Capital firm, which has raised over $80 million in funding by 2017. In 2014, Pierce became the director of the Bitcoin Foundation, a non-profit organization created to improve and promote Bitcoin. |
| Reeve Collins | Was the CEO of Tether during the first two years of its existence. Prior to that, he co-founded several successful companies such as online advertising network Traffic Marketplace, entertainment studio RedLever and gambling site Pala Interactive. |
Craig Sellars also made a big contribution to the work on Tether. He has been a member of the Omni Foundation for over six years. Its Omni Protocol allows users to create and trade properties and currencies, based on smart contracts on top of the Bitcoin blockchain.
The uniqueness of the coin
The unique feature of USDT is that its value will remain pegged to the US dollar. Whenever a company issues new USDT tokens, they allocate the same amount of US dollars to their reserves, ensuring that USDT is fully backed by cash and cash equivalents. What are the other advantages of the coin:
- USDT - a safe haven for crypto investors: during periods of high volatility, they can add their portfolios to Tether without having to cash out in USD fully;
- It provides an easy way to make dollar equivalent transactions across regions, countries and even continents via the blockchain.
USDT does not have its own blockchain - instead, it works as a second-level token on top of the blockchains of other cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, EOS, Tron, Algorand, Bitcoin Cash and OMG and has a protection with an appropriate hashing algorithms.
USDT purchase
You can buy USDT on a large number of cryptocurrency exchanges. In fact, USDT's average daily trading volume is often on par with or even exceeds that of Bitcoin. This is especially noticeable on those exchanges where trading pairs between fiat and crypto are not available, as it is a viable alternative to the US dollar. Some of the most popular exchanges that support Tether trading:
- Binance;
- OKEx;
- HitBTC;
- Huobi Global.
As of September 2020, there are over 14.4 billion USDT tokens in circulation, backed by $14.6 billion in assets, according to Tether.