What Is Tether?

Launched in 2014 by Brock Pierce (Bitcoin Foundation, Blockchain Capital, Block.1), Reeve Collins, and Craig Sellars, USDT (originally called Realcoin) is a stable-value cryptocurrency (stablecoin) that is pegged to the price of the U.S. dollar. USDT is issued by the Hong-Kong-based company Tether, which maintains, in reserves, a dollar sum equal to the number of USDT in circulation, with the goal to combine the unrestricted nature of cryptocurrencies with the stable value of the US dollar. Although the number of tokens is limited by Tether’s cash reserves, there is no hard-coded limit on the total supply. As of September 2020, there were over 14.4 billion USDT tokens in circulation, backed by $14.6 billion in assets, according to Tether. Because USDT does not have its own blockchain and operates instead as a second-layer token on top of other cryptocurrencies’ blockchains (Bitcoin, Ethereum, EOS, Tron, Algorand, Bitcoin Cash and OMG), it is secured by their respective hashing algorithms. The average block time is 10 minutes. For a full selection of markets where you can trade Tether for other cryptocurrencies, US dollars, and other fiat currencies, see below.