Tether Holdings has reportedly nixed plans of launching its own blockchain, with CEO Paolo Ardoino calling it, “not the right move.” In an interview, Ardoino said that good blockchains currently exist, suggesting that the market might be saturated.
Instead of launching its own blockchain, Tether, the largest stablecoin by market cap, seems to be focused on USDT expansion. Tether’s supply is up by 14% since March. Additionally, the issuer recently announced 2 new launches.
Tether has said no to its own ledger
Tether, the issuer of the largest stablecoin since 2014, said it will not launch its own distributed ledger. In an interview with Bloomberg, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said, “Launching a blockchain ourselves might be not the right move. There are very good blockchains.”
The CEO’s statement put to rest speculation of Tether’s own blockchain. Ardoino’s comments also seemed to suggest that the blockchain market might be becoming saturated.
Ardoino also explained that blockchains will become akin to a commodity in the future. Currently, DefiLlama estimates the total value of blockchains just under $90 billion. Out of the total TVL, Ethereum dominates 57% of the market followed by Tron (7%), Solana (6%), and BSC (5%).
Ardoino called blockchains “just transport layers.” He said that he is only focused on the security and sustainability of the layers on which Tether trades.
Tether maintains stablecoin dominance
🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 100,000,000 #USDT (100,070,000 USD) transferred from Tether Treasury to #Bitfinexhttps://t.co/LhS4U9CqjE
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) August 22, 2024
Meanwhile, Tether is growing its position with USDT launches as stablecoins gain steam. The stablecoin issuer recently announced that its dollar-pegged stablecoin will make a debut on the layer-1 blockchain Aptos Network. Tether is also set to launch a new stablecoin pegged to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) dirham (AED).
Michael Nadeau, founder of The DeFi Report, notes that since the bull run in March, Tether supply has risen by 14%. He also notes that investors might start moving their money from traditional money market funds into stablecoins.
According to current data on CoinMarketCap, Tether has a market capitalization of $117.7 billion as of press time. It has a circulating supply of 117.6 USDT. Meanwhile, in one week, Tether has minted over 3 billion USDT. Lookonchain also reported that 3.22 billion USDT moved from the Tether Treasury to exchanges after August 5.
