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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Coinbase highlights questions about Tether reserves in campaign to get users over to USDC

Coinbase is waiving the conversion fees for users that wish to switch to a “trusted stablecoin” in a new campaign that highlights the quality of reserves that back Circle-owned USD Coin (USDC).

“The events of the past few weeks have put some stablecoins to the test and we’ve seen a flight to safety,” Coinbase said in blog post published Friday morning Asia time. “We believe that USD Coin (USDC) is a trusted and reputable stablecoin.”

Coinbase said starting today it’s waiving fees for global retail customers to convert USDT to USDC.

Coinbase is a co-founder of USDC.
On-chain data shows that USDT is the third-most widely traded digital asset on Coinbase, representing 5% of the volume on the exchange, where it currently trades for 99 cents.

Days after the FTX collapse, Tether (USDT) was knocked off its peg and traded as low as 93 cents. The majority of trading pairs on exchanges have returned to $1, though CoinGecko data shows that it continues to trade at 99 cents on some pairs at Binance.

In late September, Tether was ordered by a U.S. judge in New York to produce financial records relating to the backing of USDT. This is separate from the lawsuit before the New York Supreme Court that’s asking for the New York Attorney General to release documents it gathered in its investigation into Tether’s reserves.

Recently Binance has stopped supporting USDC, auto-converting customer holdings into its own stablecoin BUSD.

The post Crypto Exchange Coinbase Asks Users to Switch USDT for USDC appeared first on Crypto Insider.

The Caribbean island’s government may accept native Tron tokens such as TRX and USDT for public payments including taxes, under a new ordinance.

Blockchain network Tron has entered into an agreement with the government of Dominica to issue a national fan token to promote the Caribbean island’s heritage and tourism, according to an announcement dated Oct. 7.

Under the agreement, the Tron protocol is the island nation’s “designated national blockchain infrastructure.” An ordinance issued on the same day shows that the Tron network’s native digital tokens were granted “statutory status,” meaning they are now authorized for use as a medium of exchange in the country.

The government may accept Tron governance tokens such as TRX, BTT and JST, as well as stablecoins pegged to the U.S. dollar on Tron’s TRC20 protocol such as USDT and USDD, as payment for public services including tax payments, the order says. Private enterprises can also accept these cryptocurrencies as payment “where necessary infrastructure for transaction is available.”

With the endorsement, Tron is also set to issue Dominica Coin (DMC), a blockchain-based fan token to “help promote Dominica’s global fanfare for its natural heritage and tourism attractions,” according to the government.

It is unclear how Tron was chosen for the task, but the “open and cost-effective nature” of the protocol will play a “vital role to better integrate Small Island Developing States like Dominica into the global economy in the future,” Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit said in a press statement.

Tron founder Justin Sun stepped down as the network’s CEO to become Carribbean nation Grenada’s ambassador to the World Trade Organization last year. He said at the time that he would focus on legitimizing crypto in Latin American countries.

In Dominica, the exchange rates between Tron’s native tokens and the East Caribbean dollar (XCD) will be freely determined by the market, while exchanges between the tokens and the XCD will not be subject to capital gains tax, the ordinance says.

CoinDesk has reached out to the Dominica government and Tron for comment.

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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.

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