Tether's USDT is the stablecoin that everything else gets measured against: a token pegged 1:1 to the US dollar, issued since 2014, and now the single most-traded crypto asset on Earth by daily volume, ahead of Bitcoin. It's less a speculative bet than infrastructure — the settlement currency for exchanges, market makers and traders who need dollar exposure without touching a bank.
What it does
Tether Limited claims each USDT is backed one-for-one by reserves, published quarterly in attestations (not full audits) that show the bulk held in short-dated US Treasuries and cash equivalents, alongside smaller allocations to Bitcoin, gold and secured loans. USDT circulates across more blockchains than any competitor, with the largest share now issued on Tron because of its low transaction fees, followed by Ethereum. That footprint makes it the default on-ramp and off-ramp for traders across Asia, Latin America and emerging markets where dollar banking access is limited.
Tether has also become extraordinarily profitable, reportedly earning billions annually from the yield on its Treasury holdings — turning a stablecoin issuer into one of the most profitable financial firms in the world on a per-employee basis.
Risks
Tether's history includes a 2021 settlement with the New York Attorney General over misrepresenting its reserves, and years of scrutiny over commercial paper holdings that have since been largely shifted into Treasuries. Full independent audits still haven't materialised, leaving reserve composition dependent on the company's own attestations. Regulatory pressure is intensifying: the EU's MiCA framework has already pushed some exchanges to delist USDT for European users over compliance gaps, and the US GENIUS Act's stablecoin rules could squeeze offshore issuers like Tether that operate outside direct US oversight. A sharp, sustained de-peg — even a temporary one, as briefly happened during 2022's market stress — would ripple through nearly every corner of crypto given how embedded USDT is in trading pairs and DeFi collateral.
USDT's dominance is a function of liquidity and habit as much as trust, and that combination has proven durable even through repeated controversy.