Tether

USDT is the largest US dollar stablecoin, issued by Tether and meant to stay worth US$1.

Tether (USDT) is a digital token designed to keep a stable value of one US dollar. It is issued by Tether International, S.A. de C.V., a company based in El Salvador. USDT was first created on 6 October 2014 on the Omni Layer, which runs on Bitcoin, and Tether now issues it on 13 blockchains, with most of the supply on Tron and Ethereum.

USDT has no fixed supply. Tether creates new tokens when verified customers deposit dollars and removes them when tokens are redeemed; direct dealing requires at least US$100,000 and carries fees of 0.1% (at least US$1,000 per redemption). At 30 June 2026 Tether reported US$187.75B of reserves against US$183.64B of liabilities, checked by the accounting firm BDO. About 61% of reserves were US Treasury bills and 14% reverse repo agreements, with the rest in gold, secured loans, bitcoin and other assets. On 16 September 2026 about US$183B of USDT was in circulation, roughly 59–64% of all dollar stablecoins, depending on the data source.

Today USDT is the main dollar currency of the crypto markets: in a sample of the largest bitcoin markets it priced about 80% of trading volume. It is also widely used to hold and send dollars, especially in emerging markets. Chainalysis estimated it moved about US$703B a month between mid-2024 and mid-2025.

Tether is a private company. Paolo Ardoino has been CEO since December 2023, and chairman Giancarlo Devasini is estimated by Forbes to own about 45%. Tether keeps the income from its reserves and pays holders no interest. In January 2026 it launched a separate US-regulated token, USAT, through Anchorage Digital Bank.