Tether (USDT) — Onchain News & Whale Tracking

ARK Invest: The stablecoin market is exhibiting a highly concentrated trend, with only Tether and Circle remaining among stablecoins with a market cap of over $10 billion.

ARK Invest Research Director Lorenzo Valente published a post stating that stablecoins have clear network effects. Though thousands of stablecoins exist in the market, the number of projects capable of reaching corresponding scales drops rapidly as the market capitalization threshold rises. Valente pointed out that the count of stablecoins with a market cap exceeding $1 billion has only grown from single digits since 2021 to 12 currently, marking very limited growth. The number of stablecoins with a market cap over $10 billion hit a peak of 4 in 2022, but now only Tether and Circle’s stablecoins remain. Valente believes that breaking into the $10 billion market cap tier is already extremely difficult, and the stablecoin segment above $100 billion may remain dominated by Tether and Circle for the long term. He added that only one stablecoin is likely to reach a market cap exceeding $500 billion in the next two years or more.

Tether and Fasanara launch a $400 million private credit fund, targeting to attract $3 billion in institutional capital.

Tether and Fasanara Capital have announced the launch of StableFund, an evergreen private credit facility. The two parties will jointly contribute $400 million as initial capital, and plan to attract up to $3 billion in third-party institutional capital to expand stablecoin-backed real economy loans. Fasanara will serve as investment manager, deploying funds into short-term, asset-backed credit strategies through its global fintech lending network. Tether, as co-sponsor, loan opportunity originator and advisor, will be responsible for sourcing USDT-related financing opportunities, and providing stablecoin settlement, on/off ramps and fund management infrastructure. The fund plans to integrate USDT into fintech platforms across more than 60 countries to provide financing to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and consumers. Tether stated that the structure is designed to enhance the efficiency of cross-border credit capital flow; the global SME financing gap is currently estimated at $5.7 trillion.

Tether freezes approximately $39.3 million worth of USDT, involving addresses linked to Xinbi Guarantee.

Tether froze approximately $39.3 million in USDT across 10 addresses on the Tron network earlier today, with the addresses linked to Xinbi Guarantee. Sources reveal that Xinbi Guarantee is an escrow trading market that emerged on Telegram around 2022. Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs has previously identified it as one of the largest illegal cryptocurrency markets in Southeast Asia, stating the platform has handled roughly $24.2 billion in total transactions. On-chain tracking platform MistTrack was the first to break the news of the related USDT freeze. This move marks Tether’s further step in on-chain asset freezing measures, targeting addresses deemed connected to high-risk or suspected illegal activities.

Tether is developing a decentralized P2P search engine, and the entire Wikipedia can be stored on just 100 nodes.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino announced in a post that Tether’s P2P team is developing a peer-to-peer (P2P) search engine, scalable to thousands of nodes, and featuring high availability and censorship resistance via a self-organizing fault-tolerant data structure. He disclosed that the team’s test environment has successfully distributed the full Wikipedia archive across 100 nodes, with search functionality fully supported and outstanding overall performance.

Tether-backed Orionx announces permanent shutdown; audit uncovers a shortfall of over $7 million in custodial assets.

Chilean crypto exchange Orionx, backed by Tether, announced it is initiating permanent closure procedures. A forensic audit previously uncovered that over $7 million in customer custodial assets were transferred to wallets not managed by the platform. Withdrawals are currently suspended, and the company stated its sole priority is to return customer assets as much as possible. The audit revealed that Orionx’s system-recorded balances of BTC, ETH, XRP, and POL exceeded the actual holdings in its custodial addresses. The firm has filed criminal complaints against two co-founders and former executives, Roberto Zibert and Joaquín Díaz, alleging the relevant assets were transferred between 2018 and 2021. The two denied the allegations, claiming they never harmed customer interests, and the cause of the asset shortfall remains unclear. Tether exclusively led Orionx’s Series A funding round in June 2025, approximately 15 months prior to the closure announcement. As of press time, Tether and Orionx had not responded to requests for comment.

Tether leads $3 million seed round for Colombian fintech startup Plenti

Colombian fintech Plenti has secured $3 million in seed funding led by Tether, with Verda Ventures participating. Tether will hold a minority stake in Plenti. The capital will be used to strengthen Plenti’s operations in Colombia and expand into Peru and Bolivia. Plenti provides services including cross-border transfers, multi-currency accounts, and investments in stocks, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies. It currently has over 150,000 active users, with annual transaction volume exceeding $3.1 billion across its B2B and B2C businesses.

Tether open-sources an AI translation model covering 19 African languages and 9 European languages.

Tether AI Research has announced the launch of multiple open-source AI translation models, which can run directly on smartphones, laptops, and other edge devices, supporting offline translation without requiring users to upload data to third-party clouds. Among them, TranslatePsy-AfriSLM supports 19 African languages, AfriNano supports 8, and EuroNano covers 9 European languages; the language group covered by the former accounts for roughly half of Africa’s total population. Tether has also introduced a new quality evaluation filtering method capable of removing up to 96% of low-quality open-source training data. The related models are now available for download on Hugging Face, and the research findings have been accepted by the EMNLP 2026 conference.

Tether sued by two Thai businessmen over freezing $42.4 million in USDT

Tether is facing a lawsuit over the freezing of $42.4 million worth of USDT. Two Thai businessmen claim their wallets were blacklisted following an informal request from a US government official, with no search warrant or court order issued at the time. The pair are now demanding the unfreezing of their assets, as well as compensation from Tether for the returns generated by the relevant reserve assets during the period their USDT was frozen.

Tether CEO: Approximately 650 million people indirectly hold U.S. Treasury bonds, and stablecoins have enabled U.S. Treasuries to achieve "decentralized holding" for the first time.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino stated that Tether is advancing the "decentralized holding" of US Treasuries via stablecoin technology, enhancing the security of the US debt holding structure. Ardoino noted that if hostile nations hold hundreds of billions of dollars in US Treasuries in a concentrated manner, a single decision-maker could offload large volumes in a short period, creating risks to the US financial system. By contrast, the number of Treasury holders backing Tether’s stablecoins is massive: roughly 650 million people currently hold related US Treasury assets indirectly. Since investors will not make sell decisions simultaneously, this mitigates the risk of concentrated sell-offs. Ardoino added that traditional finance, despite decades of so-called "financial innovation", has failed to resolve this issue, while stablecoin technology has for the first time enabled more widespread, decentralized holding of US Treasuries.

Tether’s CEO refutes the claim that “stablecoins cannot support large-scale payments”: Stablecoins are 100% reserve-backed, while banks operate on fractional reserves that are merely based on hollow promises.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino has responded in a post to remarks from Bank for International Settlements (BIS) General Manager, who claimed stablecoins are inadequate for large-scale payments and instead backed tokenized bank deposits. Ardoino drew a structural comparison between the two: stablecoins are backed by 100% liquid assets such as government bonds, while tokenized bank deposits are essentially unenforceable pledges—typically not fully insured, with liquid asset reserves often standing at just around 10% (a fractional reserve). The BIS’s real concern is not whether stablecoins can facilitate payments, but that they expose the "emperor’s new clothes" of the traditional banking system. Ardoino then raised two questions: if stablecoins are fully reserved, why should savings be placed in fractional reserve products? What would become of the financial system if people realize stablecoins are safer and move their savings there? Ardoino directly took aim at the fractional reserve model of the traditional banking system.

Tether’s Bitcoin mining project in Uruguay has stalled due to a power contract dispute, with an estimated investment of up to $120 million.

According to Reuters, Tether’s bitcoin mining farm project in Uruguay has been shut down due to a power supply contract dispute with local state-owned power company UTE. The project’s investment is estimated at around $120 million. The two sides hold differing views on the contracted power supply volume: Tether regards the figure as a minimum guaranteed supply, while UTE considers it a cap on power delivery. As no new agreement was signed and power fees fell into arrears, UTE cut power to the two mining sites on July 25, 2025. Tether subsequently ended its local operations and laid off most of its staff. The Uruguay project was once seen by Tether as the "first step" in its push into the South American bitcoin mining market. However, Tether continues to expand its regional energy and mining footprint; it previously acquired a 70% stake in renewable energy firm Adecoagro and plans to use its surplus power for bitcoin mining.

Binance transferred 500 million USDT to Tether Treasury.

According to monitoring by TradingBeats (formerly Hyperinsight), Binance transferred 500 million USDT to the Tether Treasury six minutes ago.

Tether CEO: The company is not building any blockchain, nor does it have any related plans.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino has stated that Tether is not building any blockchain and has no related plans. The stablecoin issuer will remain chain-agnostic, supporting multiple blockchains as transmission networks for USDT. This comes after CoinMarketCap previously analyzed that stablecoin firms including Stripe, Circle, and Tether are each developing their own dedicated blockchains. Ardoino’s response denies the claim that Tether is building its own blockchain.

Tether CEO: The company is not building any blockchain, nor does it have any related plans.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino stated that Tether has not developed its own blockchain and has no plans to do so. The firm will remain chain-neutral and support multiple blockchains as transmission networks for USDT. Earlier, CoinMarketCap analyzed that stablecoin companies including Stripe, Circle, and Tether were each building dedicated blockchains. Ardoino’s latest response denies claims that Tether is developing its own blockchain.

Stablecoin issuer Tether has completed its largest-ever full financial audit, with KPMG issuing an unqualified opinion, showing reserves exceeding liabilities by $6.814 billion.

USDT issuer Tether announced it has completed a full independent audit of its 2025 fiscal year financial statements by KPMG U.S., receiving an unqualified audit opinion—the most positive outcome an independent auditor can issue. Dubbed "the largest first-time financial audit in history", the engagement saw KPMG conduct comprehensive substantive testing on Tether’s balance sheet, reserve asset composition, outstanding token liabilities, income statement, changes in equity, and cash flow statement. Critically, instead of relying solely on custodian reports, KPMG physically counted every gold bar held by Tether to verify their existence and identifying details. The audit confirmed Tether’s reserves exceeded its liabilities by $6.814 billion as of December 31, 2025. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino stated: "Critics have for years claimed Tether could not complete an audit, and we have once again proven them wrong. An unqualified opinion means Tether has secured a clean audit." CFO Simon McWilliams called the milestone "a landmark in Tether’s commitment to transparency", noting the firm has wrapped up a historic project with the Big Four accounting firms and will continue to elevate standards moving forward. Tether has long published independent reserve attestation reports; this full financial statement audit marks a jump in its financial reporting regime from the attestation level to the full audit tier.

Tether minted an additional 1 billion USDT on the Tron network today.

Tether minted 1 billion additional USDT on the Tron network 7 hours ago.

Tether just minted another 1B $USDT on #Tron! The total supply of $USDT on #Tron has now exceeded 91B.

Tether just minted another 1B $USDT on #Tron! The total supply of $USDT on #Tron has now exceeded 91B.

Tether just minted another 1B $USDT on #Tron! The total supply of $USDT on #Tron has now exceeded 91B.

Tether just minted another 1B $USDT on #Tron! The total supply of $USDT on #Tron has now exceeded 91B.

Tether Gold investor holdings rose 9.5% in Q2, with demand for tokenized gold continuing to heat up.

Data released by Tether shows that its tokenized gold product Tether Gold (XAU?) saw a 9.5% rise in investor holdings during the second quarter of 2026, reflecting sustained growing demand for on-chain gold assets. The data indicates that despite a 14.1% drop in gold prices in Q2, investors continued to add to their XAU? positions, showing that market demand is not solely driven by bullish gold trends—some investors are taking advantage of price pullbacks to increase their exposure to physical gold. As of June 30, 2026, XAU? is fully backed by physical gold at a 1:1 ratio, with total gold reserves amounting to 707,747.139 troy ounces, equivalent to approximately 22.01 tons and valued at around $2.837 billion. By the end of Q2, 612,823.66 XAU? tokens had been issued, up 53,225.02 from 559,598.64 at the end of Q1, corresponding to an additional 1.66 tons of physical gold held by investors, representing a roughly 9.5% rise in client holdings. Tether noted that XAU?’s gold reserves remained unchanged throughout the quarter, with every token backed by at least one troy ounce of physical gold. The gold is stored in Swiss vaults, including 1,759 London Good Delivery standard bars and other bars of various specifications. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said that gold experienced its largest quarterly decline in 13 years during Q2, yet investors continued to buy XAU?, indicating that tokenized gold is becoming a new way for investors to allocate to physical gold. Additionally, data from Tether International SA de CV shows that the company purchased a total of about 27.1 tons of gold in the first half of 2026, with an average monthly procurement of roughly 4.5 tons. If included in central bank gold purchase rankings, its total gold holdings would stand at approximately 150 tons, ranking third in global gold accumulation during the period, second only to Poland and China.

Tether's Q2 performance weakened, with its excess reserves declining by more than $4 billion.

Stablecoin issuer Tether released its financial report on Friday, revealing that its excess reserves fell by $4.1 billion in the second quarter compared to the prior quarter. At the end of Q1, USDT’s issuer had reported assets exceeding liabilities by $8.2 billion; that figure has now dropped to $4.1 billion in the latest data. The report also noted Tether posted a $3.2 billion net loss for the first half of this year. With the company having reported $1 billion in net profit in Q1, this implies it likely suffered a loss of over $4 billion in Q2. Year-over-year, Tether’s performance has also weakened notably: its Q2 2025 net profit stood at $4.9 billion, while this year’s Q2 net operating profit was $1.5 billion. Net operating profit typically excludes unrealized gains and losses from price fluctuations in assets like Bitcoin and gold.

Tether Releases Q2 Financial Report: Net Operating Profit Hits $1.5 Billion, Reserve Assets Exceed Liabilities by $4.11 Billion

Tether released its Q2 2026 financial report. As of June 30, USDT circulation stood at approximately $184.6 billion, up around $446 million from the end of Q1, lifting its stablecoin market share to over 60%. The report was compiled by independent accounting firm BDO. Tether’s Q2 net operating profit hit roughly $1.5 billion, primarily from U.S. Treasury and repurchase (repo) operations. At quarter-end, the company’s total assets were about $187.751 billion, with total liabilities around $183.642 billion; of the liabilities, roughly $183.622 billion was tied to issued digital tokens, resulting in assets exceeding liabilities by approximately $4.11 billion. During the quarter, Tether cut its secured loan exposure by around $2.38 billion, a 15% reduction. It also added 14 tons of physical gold, bringing its total gold holdings to over 146 tons. The stablecoin issuer noted it remains one of the world’s largest U.S. Treasury buyers and holders, with its global user base growing by more than 30 million in Q2. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino stated that despite significant volatility in gold and Bitcoin markets, USDT remains fully reserve-backed. The company also continued its audit process with the Big Four accounting firms during the same period.

Tether’s compliant stablecoin USAT has gone live on the Celo blockchain, marking its second mainnet deployment following Ethereum.

Tether’s compliant stablecoin USAT has launched on Celo, marking its second mainnet deployment following Ethereum. Issued by Anchorage Digital Bank, the token can be natively minted and redeemed on Celo, and directly cover on-chain gas fees via Celo’s fee abstraction mechanism. USAT launched in January this year, with a current market capitalization of approximately $185 million.

Tether open-sources edge-side vision-language model VisionPsy-Nano

According to Tether’s official blog, QVAC, an AI research project under Tether Data, has open-sourced VisionPsy-Nano—a compact vision-language model built for end-device and edge deployment. With around 460 million parameters, the model brings multimodal understanding capabilities that previously required cloud infrastructure directly to mobile devices. Among all evaluated end-side vision-language models with fewer than 500 million parameters, VisionPsy-Nano scored the highest overall normalized score of 62.3, outperforming competing models from Liquid AI, Hugging Face, and others in 16 out of 17 benchmark tests. Tether is launching two versions of the model: the Flash version, optimized for low latency, which retains roughly 99% of the full model’s quality while drastically improving inference speed. Both versions are open-sourced under the Apache 2.0 license. Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, noted that this proves local-first, efficient AI is a viable approach, enabling powerful and private AI to run on devices people already have.

Tether’s gold token XAUT secures Shariah compliance certification, opening up the Middle East and global Muslim markets.

Tether announced that its gold-backed digital asset XAUT has obtained Shariah compliance certification from Amanah Advisors, providing a compliant digital gold investment channel for global Muslim users, Islamic banks, and institutional investors. Tether stated that the certification confirms XAUT aligns with core principles of Islamic finance, enabling users to hold physical gold digitally via blockchain infrastructure. Each XAUT token represents direct ownership of physical gold stored in Swiss vaults, with no interest (riba), leverage, or speculative derivatives included in its structure. Amanah Advisors verified that XAUT issuer TG Commodities, S.A. de C.V. meets Islamic finance requirements, including: actual ownership of physical gold; transparent and verifiable asset reserves; no interest mechanism; no leverage or speculative derivatives; and a transparent reserve structure. Tether noted that gold has long played a key role in the Islamic financial system, and XAUT aims to bridge traditional gold value with blockchain technology to enhance global accessibility of digital gold. The certification is expected to drive XAUT adoption in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, South Asia, parts of Africa, and global Islamic financial hubs, including digital gold services from Islamic banks, Shariah-compliant savings products, asset preservation solutions, and institutional-grade gold allocations.

Tether takes a $20 million stake in Argentine digital bank Ualá, continuing to expand its footprint in South America.

The world’s largest stablecoin issuer Tether has invested $20 million in Argentine digital bank Ualá, which counts over 11 million customers across Argentina, Mexico, and Colombia, offering services including accounts, cards, loans, and investments. The investment forms part of Ualá’s $197 million funding round announced in March this year, led by Allianz X, Allianz’s venture arm, with a post-money valuation of $3.2 billion. At this valuation, Tether holds an approximately 0.6% stake. Ualá CEO Pierpaolo Barbieri stated that current regulations in Argentina and Mexico have hindered recent plans to integrate USDT, and Tether is participating in the round solely as a financial investor. Tether has been ramping up its footprint in South America recently: in April, it led a $14 million funding round for Argentine payment wallet Belo; it holds around 70% of shares in Adecoagro, an agricultural and energy producer operating in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay; and earlier this month, it put $20 million into Brazilian crypto exchange Mercado Bitcoin. Tether uses excess capital from returns on USDT reserve assets for these investments. Currently, USDT has a circulating supply of $184 billion, with a net profit of $1.04 billion in the first quarter of this year.

FT: Circle previously blocked a crypto fund account backed by Tether, and later secured favorable arbitration rulings.

According to a Financial Times report, newly unsealed court documents show that stablecoin issuer Circle blocked Tether-backed crypto fund Heka Funds at the end of 2023, suspecting it of manipulating markets via large-scale arbitrage operations and helping Tether expand its market share. The documents note that during the 2023 Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) crisis, USDC briefly broke below its $1 peg. Heka continuously purchased large amounts of discounted USDC and redeemed it for U.S. dollars from Circle. Circle deemed Heka’s redemption volume far exceeded that of other market participants, and suspected the funds ultimately flowed to Tether to help grow USDT’s market size. Arbitration documents also disclose that Tether invested approximately $800 million in Heka, accounting for around 75% of the fund’s assets, and waived stablecoin minting fees. Arbitrators found that Heka failed to truthfully disclose Tether’s backing relationship and knew the information would raise concerns at Circle. In 2024, Heka filed an arbitration claim after its account was blocked, seeking around $49 million in lost profits. In February this year, arbitrators rejected all of Heka’s claims, ruling it had engaged in malicious conduct and ordered it to pay Circle approximately $166,000 in legal and expert fees. Heka denied market manipulation and stated it had never faced regulatory investigations over the matter. Circle declined to comment, while Tether did not respond to media requests for comment.

Tether leads Pact Labs’ $7 million Series A funding round, driving the expansion of stablecoin USAT’s service offerings.

According to official announcements, Tether today announced it has led Pact Labs' $7 million Series A funding round, with Blockchange Ventures and Lasagna participating. The investment will support Pact Labs' development, enabling it to become a core infrastructure provider for USAT in areas including payroll, early wage access, credit, and daily payments.

Uniswap generated approximately $5.027 million in trading fees over the past 24 hours, ranking second only to Tether and Circle.

Uniswap founder Hayden Adams noted in a post that, per DefiLlama data, Uniswap’s 24-hour trading fees totaled approximately $5.027 million, ranking second in daily trading fees only behind Tether and Circle, and exceeding projects such as Hyperliquid and pump.fun.

Unusual activity on Tether’s Bitcoin reserve address: 4 BTC transferred out, Q2 accumulation reportedly suspended.

According to monitoring by EmberCN, Tether allocates 15% of its quarterly profits to its Bitcoin reserve address. Approximately 5 hours ago, this address made a test transfer of 4 BTC to Binance, valued at roughly $250,000. EmberCN stated that this same address previously transferred 204.3 BTC to Bitfinex a month ago, worth approximately $14.36 million at the time, when Bitcoin’s price stood at around $70,000. It remains unclear whether these assets have been sold. Additionally, Tether appears to have not yet completed the on-chain withdrawal of new Bitcoin for Q2 2026. Per its usual practice, Tether typically transfers BTC purchased in the quarter to its reserve address on the last day of each quarter. However, more than 10 days have elapsed since the end of Q2, and no new Bitcoin deposits to this reserve address have been observed on-chain, sparking market concerns over whether it has adjusted its Bitcoin accumulation pace.

Tether has minted 1 billion USDT on the Tron network.

According to monitoring by Onchain Lens, Tether has minted 1 billion USDT on the Tron network.

Tether burned 2.5 billion USDT on Ethereum in a single day, marking the largest single-day burn since February.

CryptoQuant cited on-chain data, reporting that on July 7, Tether Treasury burned $2.5 billion worth of USDT on the Ethereum network. This marks the largest single burn on the network since February this year, exceeding the $2 billion burn on May 8, and second only to the all-time high of $3.5 billion recorded on February 10. Meanwhile, the USDT balance flowing into and out of Binance via the Tron network dropped to roughly $806 million, its lowest level since December 29, 2025 (when it hit $391 million), falling below the $1 billion threshold and signaling a significant contraction in USDT liquidity on Binance’s Tron channel. The large-scale burn by Tether Treasury primarily reflects redemption, fund management, or cross-chain rebalancing operations rather than a direct market signal. However, the synchronized contraction of Ethereum’s USDT supply and Binance’s Tron liquidity is worth ongoing monitoring, as market participants will watch whether the liquidity of dual-chain stablecoins continues this concurrent tightening trend.

Tether has invested $20 million in Mercado Bitcoin to support the construction of on-chain financial infrastructure in Latin America.

Tether announced it will invest $20 million in the strategic growth funding round of Latin American on-chain financial services platform Mercado Bitcoin, to support its expansion in tokenization, payments, credit, capital markets, and regulated digital financial services. Founded in 2013, Mercado Bitcoin originally launched as a digital asset trading platform and has since evolved into a comprehensive on-chain financial platform covering trading infrastructure, tokenized investment products, credit and lending, stablecoin payments, banking infrastructure, and cross-border financial services. The company currently serves 4.5 million users, has issued over R$2 billion in tokenized assets, and holds more than 10 licenses in Brazil and Europe.

Former Tether Chief Investment Officer plans to sell a portion of their 1.26% stake.

Former Tether Chief Investment Officer Richard Heathcote plans to sell part of his stake in Tether, which currently stands at approximately 1.26%. The secondary equity sale is being handled by PJT Partners, and the firm is currently in talks with potential buyers.

Former Tether Chief Investment Officer Plans to Sell Stake in Tether

Bloomberg reported that sources familiar with the matter disclosed Richard Heathcote, former chief investment officer (CIO) of Tether, is collaborating with PJT Partners to sell a portion of his 1.26% stake in Tether. He is currently in talks with potential buyers, and no valuation has been disclosed. Earlier this March, Heathcote stepped down as Tether’s CIO and transitioned to an advisory role.

Tether will launch XAUT gold-collateralized lending service, further expanding the applications of tokenized gold.

Tether is putting its approximately $23 billion in gold reserves to further use, partnering with crypto lending platform Ledn to expand use cases for its tokenized gold product Tether Gold (XAUT). Ledn has announced support for XAUT and plans to launch XAUT-collateralized lending services later this year, joining its existing offerings of Bitcoin and USDT-backed loans. Per available details, each XAUT token is backed by one troy ounce of physical gold stored in Swiss vaults. Tether states it holds around $23 billion in gold reserves, providing 1:1 backing for XAUT. Going forward, users will be able to access liquidity without selling their gold assets by collateralizing XAUT, a model similar to Bitcoin-backed lending. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino noted that as digital assets grow in importance to the global economy, market demand for financial instruments balancing long-term holdings and capital flexibility continues to rise. In recent years, Tether has leveraged profits from USDT to expand its business footprint, now holding approximately 140 tons of physical gold, investing in precious metals trading platform Gold.com, and partnering with crypto finance firm Antalpha to advance XAUT’s applications in lending and physical redemption. Additionally, Tether has expanded into multiple sectors including Bitcoin mining, renewable energy, AI infrastructure, and computing power.

500 million USDT transferred from Tether Treasury to Binance

According to Whale Alert's monitoring, 500 million USDT was transferred from the Tether Treasury to Binance five minutes ago.

Using Donations to Buy a Ferrari? UK Reform Party Leader Calls Tether Shareholders' $6.7 Million Donation an "Unconditional Gift"

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has addressed the ￡5 million (approximately $6.7 million) gift he received from Tether shareholder Christopher Harborne, describing the funds as an "unconditional gift" whose use is entirely personal—adding, "If I wished, I could use it to buy a Ferrari." The UK Parliament’s Standards Commissioner is currently investigating whether Farage should have declared the donation after being elected as a Member of Parliament in 2024. Under parliamentary rules, newly elected MPs are generally required to disclose high-value gifts received in the preceding year. Harborne, a British-Thai businessman, holds roughly 12% of Tether—issuer of the stablecoin USDT—and is one of Reform UK’s key donors. In response to external concerns that the gift could influence his stance on cryptocurrency, Farage rejected the claim, stating he has long supported the crypto industry and advocates for establishing a UK Bitcoin reserve and lowering capital gains tax on digital assets. Notably, the personal gift is separate from political donations Harborne has made to Reform UK, and neither was paid in cryptocurrency.

Tether Co-founder: Stablecoin 2.0 Era Requires Rethinking User Dollar Fund Distribution Mechanism

June 20th: Tether co-founder Reeve Collins stated that Tether holds its users’ U.S. dollar deposits and invests those funds in U.S. Treasury bonds, which currently yield approximately 3%–4%. Tether retains all earnings from these investments, giving users instant global U.S. dollar liquidity while they earn no interest on their assets. This straightforward model has cemented Tether’s position as a market leader but has also built an inherent structure of platform-centric earnings. Collins believes this is the core dynamic that needs to change in the Stablecoin 2.0 era. Additionally, Collins emphasized the necessity of distinguishing between investment and speculation, the importance of entering the AI infrastructure layer early rather than focusing on external application-layer development, and the strategy of holding Bitcoin long-term as a core asset allocation.

Tether announced that it will gradually discontinue the operation of Alloy and aUSDT, focusing on its core business.

June 18: Tether has announced it will wind down operations for Alloy by Tether and its aUSDT stablecoin product as planned. The decision comes after a full assessment of user engagement, market demand, and the company’s overall strategic priorities. Launched earlier as an open platform, Alloy by Tether was designed to explore a digital asset issuance model backed by Tether Gold (XAUT), including its overcollateralized stable asset aUSDT. Since its launch, the platform has provided the market with meaningful real-world data on gold-backed tokens and key insights into asset tokenization applications. Following this strategic adjustment, Tether will redirect its resources to core product lines with stronger demand, higher liquidity, and long-term growth potential—including critical ecosystem assets like XAUT. The closure will be phased to ensure a smooth transition: effective immediately, the platform is disabling functions for opening new positions and minting aUSDT to prevent additiona

Tether Signs Memorandum of Understanding with Dubai Multi Commodities Centre to Advance Blockchain Education and Asset Tokenization

June 16 — Stablecoin issuer Tether has entered into a partnership memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC) to explore collaboration on three key areas: tokenization, digital asset education, and blockchain applications. DMCC, one of the world’s leading commercial hubs, hosts more than 26,000 businesses that make up 15% of Dubai’s total foreign direct investment (FDI). Under the MoU, Tether will deliver specialized workshops, blockchain advisory services, and digital asset pilot projects to companies in DMCC’s network. The pair will also look to enhance the DMCC community experience via a peer-to-peer digital payment system, and support knowledge sharing and innovation at the DMCC Crypto Center — including co-hosting events and hackathons. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino noted that the UAE is actively integrating digital asset infrastructure into the global market and real economy. He added that this partnership aims to accelerate the practical applica

Tether's AI Platform QVAC Releases SDK 0.13.0, Introducing Brain-Computer Interface Plugin

Per monitoring from Dongcha Beating, Tether's native AI development platform QVAC has launched SDK version 0.13.0. Key updates in this release include: - Added the @qvac/ai-sdk-provider as a local inference provider for coding intelligences like opencode - Added support to easily package QVAC projects into desktop applications for Mac, Windows, or Linux, powered by Electron - Incorporated support for the pi0.5 visual language model, which can run at full precision on a single consumer-grade GPU - Added local map-based video functionality via the Wan2.1 model - Added a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) plugin that decodes neural signals into text directly at the device level Additionally, the update brings Android-side optimizations for Whisper GPU transcription, improvements to mobile Parakeet speech recognition, and full GPU acceleration support for Supertonic TTS. --- Click the original link below to join the Dongcha Beating · Feishu AI News Channel, which tracks global AI hot topics

Tether Freezes 72.03 Million USDT in One Address

June 12 — According to on-chain monitoring tool Whale Alert, 72,030,295 USDT held in a single crypto address have just been frozen by Tether.

Tether Confirms Lead Investment of Up to $1.4 Billion in NEURA Robotics Series C Funding

June 10: Tether confirmed it is leading a $1.4 billion USD Series C funding round for Neura Robotics. Today, German robotics startup Neura Robotics—based in Meckingen—announced it is closing a roughly €1 billion funding round to accelerate development of AI-driven humanoid robots. The round is projected to lift Neura Robotics’ valuation to around €4 billion, with potential for future follow-on rounds. Founded in 2019 by David Reger, Neura Robotics specializes in "cognitive robots" with vision, hearing, and environmental awareness. The firm also builds industrial and consumer robots, and has developed the Neuraverse software platform to enable intelligent human-robot collaboration. Public filings show the startup previously raised €120 million in January 2025, in a round led by Lingotto Investment Management, with Volvo Cars Tech Fund among other backers. Neura Robotics says its order backlog is nearly $1 billion, with clients including Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Omron.

Tether Appoints Independent Director to Twenty One Capital Board, Restoring Full Audit Committee Structure

On June 6, stablecoin issuer Tether announced it has appointed a new independent director to the board of Bitcoin reserve firm Twenty One Capital (XXI) to fill an open audit committee seat. The company confirmed the appointment meets independence standards laid out by the U.S. SEC’s Rule 10A-3 and NYSE listing requirements. The vacancy emerged after Tether acquired SoftBank Group’s stake in XXI on May 20. Once their shared governance agreement ended, all SoftBank-nominated directors resigned—including one audit committee member. Twenty One Capital currently holds over 43,500 Bitcoins and operates as a vertically integrated Bitcoin company, with business lines spanning mining, asset reserves, capital markets, and financial services. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino noted XXI is building what will be one of the world’s leading Bitcoin enterprises. “Our top priority here is ensuring the board has an independent oversight framework compliant with SEC and NYSE rules, to match the strength of it

Tether Launches World's First Gold-Backed Visa Card, Offering XAUT Rewards for Purchases

On June 3rd, Tether partnered with Fasset to launch the world’s first gold-backed Visa debit card. The card lets users spend fiat at any global Visa merchant, with eligible transactions earning up to 6% cashback in XAUT—Tether’s gold-backed token. It also supports real-time conversion between XAUT, USDT, and fiat currencies, plus an auto-round-up feature that turns spare change from purchases into XAUT investments, making passive gold accumulation effortless through everyday spending. Tether has committed up to $1 million worth of XAUT for ecosystem rewards to boost adoption of tokenized gold in emerging markets. The total market capitalization of tokenized gold now exceeds $5.3 billion, with XAUT accounting for more than $2.6 billion of that figure.

Tether's BTC Reserve Address Moves 204.3 BTC to Bitfinex, Worth $14.36 million

On June 2nd, per EmberCN’s monitoring, a Bitcoin reserve address belonging to Tether—issuer of the USDT stablecoin—transferred 204.3 BTC (valued at $14.36 million) to Bitfinex three hours ago. Since 2023, this address has allocated 15% of Tether’s corporate profits to purchase Bitcoin, bringing its total holdings to 96,936 BTC worth $6.72 billion, making it the fifth-largest Bitcoin wallet globally. The average purchase price for these BTC is roughly $51,312, resulting in an unrealized gain of approximately $1.75 billion.

Tether's Team QVAC to Host Inaugural AI Hackathon

May 26 – Tether’s QVAC team has officially announced the upcoming first-ever QVAC Hackathon, calling for developers to build real edge AI applications using the @qvac/sdk. The event stands out for supporting on-device inference, being fully open source, and requiring no cloud infrastructure at all. The hackathon features 4 dedicated tracks, each with cash rewards plus an overall grand prize, with a total prize pool of $21,000. Submissions open June 1 and run through June 22, with winners set to be announced on July 3.

Tether Partners with the Government of Georgia to Launch Official Stablecoin GEL?

MAY 25 — Official sources report that Tether, in collaboration with the Georgian government, plans to launch a stablecoin pegged to the Georgian Lari, named GEL?. This marks one of the first joint initiatives to bring a national fiat currency directly into the digital asset space, operating under a purpose-built stablecoin regulatory framework. GEL? will act as a digital equivalent of the Georgian Lari, enabling lower transaction costs, near-instant settlements, programmable payments, and smoother, more efficient value transfers within digital financial systems. The project is expected to fuel fintech growth, advance digital payment adoption, and expand access to programmable financial infrastructure across Georgia and the broader region. Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze commented: “With visionary partners like Tether, Georgia is laying the foundation for a more connected, transparent, and digitally empowered global financial ecosystem.” Tether’s CEO Paolo Ardoino added: “St

Tether announces acquisition of Softbank's stake in Twenty One Capital

On May 20th, Tether announced it has acquired SoftBank’s entire stake in Bitcoin investment firm Twenty One Capital (XXI), becoming the majority shareholder of the company. Following the completion of the transaction, a SoftBank board representative will step down from XXI’s board in line with the shareholder agreement terms. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino highlighted that SoftBank was instrumental to Twenty One Capital’s early setup and growth stages, bringing professional perspective, credibility, and the rigorous approach characteristic of top-tier tech investors to help lay a solid foundation for the firm. Moving forward, Tether says it is even more confident in XXI’s future and will continue advancing its Bitcoin-focused strategy to enter the next phase of growth.

Non-custodial cryptocurrency wallet Sorted Wallet has completed a $4.4 million seed round financing, with Tether and Gnosis co-leading the investment.

May 20 – Non-custodial crypto wallet Sorted Wallet has closed a $4.4 million seed round of financing. The equity investment portion of the round amounts to $3.4 million and is led by investors Tether and Gnosis. Vox Solutions contributed an extra $1 million in strategic support, with angel investors including Movement, Angel Invest Group, and the founder of RWA.io joining the financing. Separately, Tether made a $1.5 million strategic investment in Sorted Wallet back in 2024.