The stablecoin issuer’s BTC stack now tops 75,000 tokens worth about $5 billion.

Tether, the issuer of USDT, the world’s largest stablecoin based on market cap, added just shy of 8,889 bitcoin (BTC) in the first quarter, according to on-chain trackers such as Arkham Intelligence.

Though Tether made no official announcement of the action, a wallet believed to belong to the company shows as having 8,888.8888 bitcoin moved to it on March 31. Tether, of course, has made no secret of its intention to use a portion of its profits to acquire bitcoin.

That wallet is now the holder of 75,354 bitcoins worth about $5.2 billion at BTC’s current price of $69,000, putting Tether’s profit at roughly $3 billion.

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Tether is looking to improve the stablecoin’s liquidity across multiple blockchains.

Tether has issued its stablecoin (USDT) on layer 1 blockchain Kava as it looks to enhance liquidity across multiple blockchains, according to a press release.

Kava’s native token (KAVA) surged as much as 4.8% to $0.937 before receding to $0.912. It remains more than 12% higher over the past 24 hours amid a wider crypto market recovery, CoinMarketCap data show.

The Kava blockchain’s mainnet was upgraded last month with improvements being made to transaction speeds and the functionality of cross-chain bridges.

USDT is currently supported on Ethereum, Tron, Binance Smart Chain, Solana and Bitcoin via Omni.

The stablecoin’s market cap hit an all-time high of $83.5 billion last week as it extracts market share from its main competitor, USD Coin (USDC), which has a market cap of $28 billion.

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USDT has been added to Telegram’s @wallet bot, expanding the messaging app’s facility for buying and selling crypto.

Telegram users can now send each other tether (USDT), the world’s largest stablecoin by market cap, within chats in the messaging app.

USDT has been added to Telegram’s @wallet bot, expanding the messaging app’s facility for buying and selling crypto, according to an emailed announcement shared with CoinDesk on Wednesday.

Integrating crypto payments into messaging apps like Telegram – in theory rendering sending cryptocurrency as easy as sending a text or a photograph – should be an extremely positive development for mainstream adoption.

Last April, bitcoin (BTC) and toncoin (TON) were added to @wallet’s marketplace, with the latter also available to send within chats.

Stablecoins like USDT offer many of the benefit as other cryptos do but without the price volatility that often besets the likes of bitcoin and ether. Therefore they are a vital component for users who wish to keep their money in the crypto ecosystem but without risking it being on the receiving end of any sharp swings in value.

The addition of USDT could therefore prove an important development for Telegram’s crypto service.

The messaging app’s cryptocurrency journey goes back some years to its development of the Open Network (TON) blockchain project. However, this development was abandoned in 2020 owing to legal battles with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

However, TON was kept alive by members of its community, calling themselves The TON Foundation, who have continued to advance the project.

Despite not being directly involved in TON, Telegram maintains an interest in the network, exemplified by building its blockchain-based auction platform Fragment atop it late last year.

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While tether has passed the market’s stress test with a return to normalcy, concerns about its reserves will linger, one trader said.

Tether (USDT), a stablecoin meant to be worth a dollar, has found stability for the first time in over two months.

The world’s largest stablecoin by market value regained its dollar peg on July 20 and has remained steady since then, the first such instance since the collapse of Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD or UST (now TerraClassicUSD) in the second week of May.

Terra’s UST, the-then third largest stablecoin in the world, tanked on May 12, spurring panic selling in other dollar-pegged cryptocurrencies. Tether’s peg broke and fell as low as $0.92 on some exchanges following UST’s crash and averaged about $0.99 in June.

Tether’s market capitalization has declined by $16 billion to $65 billion in two months, a sign of large redemptions by holders. This means that the company behind USDT, Tether Ltd, honored billions of dollars worth of redemptions following UST’s meltdown. Tether Ltd has long been criticized for the lack of transparency about the nature of assets backing the stablecoin.

In other words, tether has passed the market’s stress test, withstanding redemptions in volatile conditions and eventually reclaiming the peg. “The past two months have definitely been a stress test for stablecoins following the collapse of UST and sharp contraction in USDT’s market cap,” Clara Medalie, research director at Kaiko, said. “Tether proved it’s ability to process billions in redemptions, despite lingering questions over the makeup of its reserves.”

It remains to be seen if tether’s recent resilience bolsters investor confidence in the stablecoin, and trader and analyst Alex Kruger is still skeptical about the stablecoin’s resilience. Tether is heavily used in the bitcoin (BTC) market and decentralized finance (DeFi).

“Tether has once again passed the stress test under extreme market conditions,” Kruger said. “However, I do not foresee tether FUD to diminish in any significant way until there is stablecoin issuer regulation in place and Tether adheres to it (such regulation does not yet exist).”

Tether Ltd has long claimed that the value of its stablecoin is always 100% backed by assets to ensure the stability of the 1:1 dollar peg. In May, Tether Ltd published an attestation of holdings by independent accountants MHA Cayman, which showed the company held $39.2 billion in Treasuries, had $4.1 billion in bank deposits, $6.7 billion in money market funds and $3.1 billion in secured loans. A potential loss of confidence in tether will most likely result in a severe liquidity shock to the broader crypto market, according to JPMorgan (JPM).

While tether is supposedly fully collateralized, UST, is an algorithmic stablecoin backed by an endogenous token LUNA, whose value is tied to the stablecoin itself. The setup makes UST and algorithmic stablecoins vulnerable to bank runs, like the one seen in May.

While tether is supposedly fully collateralized, UST, is an algorithmic stablecoin backed by an endogenous token LUNA, whose value is tied to the stablecoin itself. The setup makes UST and algorithmic stablecoins vulnerable to bank runs, like the one seen in May.

The post Tether Finds Stable Dollar Peg After Terra’s Collapse appeared first on Crypto Insider.

• The report said “stablecoins could support faster, more efficient, and more inclusive payments options.”
• The White House has been working with economic advisors and regulators for months on the digital assets.

The Biden administration released a highly anticipated report Monday asking Congress to create regulations for stablecoins.

Stablecoins, which are cryptocurrencies tied to government-issued money like the US dollar, could become widely adopted, the report said, adding that a regulatory framework would increase confidence in using the digital assets for payment purposes.

“If well-designed and appropriately regulated, stablecoins could support faster, more efficient, and more inclusive payments options,” according to the report from the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets.

But rules around stablecoins are “urgently needed,” and Congress should impose certain laws like only allowing banks to issue the coins, it added.

“Failure to act risks growth of payment stablecoins without adequate protection for users, the financial system, and the broader economy,” the report warned.

Without stablecoin legislation from Congress, the report also recommended that the Financial Stability Oversight Council consider designating some activities as systemically important. Eventually, that could lead the Federal Reserve to crafting stablecoin rules.

Biden has long been working with top economic advisors and senior regulators such as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to propose rules regarding stablecoins. A separate report on digital currencies from the Fed is also expected soon.

Regulators have been grappling with how to manage digital assets in recent months as attention around them has grown. Stablecoins, though they account for only small piece of the more than $2 trillion digital-asset market, have caught the attention of regulators because of their rapid growth.

Well-known coins include ones from Tether, Circle, and Binance, whose tokens’ combined valuation has jumped to $110 billion from $11 billion last year, we reported previously.

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