Tether (USDT)

Tether: a closer look

What Tether is

Tether is the largest stablecoin: its job is to stay at the one-dollar mark. It has been issued since 2014 by Tether Limited, and the backing consists mostly of cash equivalents and short-term US Treasury bills.

How Tether works

USDT has no blockchain of its own. The same dollar token lives in several networks at once: TRON, Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, Solana, TON, Polygon, Arbitrum and others. You cannot move the token from one network to another directly — that is done through exchanges and bridges.

What Tether is for

People sit out drawdowns in USDT, settle deals, send dollars abroad and pay for services with it. By trading volume it is the market's number one asset and the most familiar way to lock in the result after selling other coins.

Sending USDT

Everything comes down to the choice of network. TRON is picked for being cheap and fast, ERC20 is accepted practically everywhere but gas there is noticeably dearer, and Solana, TON and BEP20 are the inexpensive middle ground. The recipient address must belong to the same network you are sending on, and to pay the fee your wallet needs the native coin of that network — TRX, ETH, BNB and so on.

Where to keep Tether

Any wallet that supports the network you need will do. It is worth checking that it shows the official contract: fakes with the same ticker circulate under the USDT name.

What to keep in mind

A lot depends on the issuer: at the demand of regulators Tether can freeze tokens on a particular address, and the dollar peg rests on the company's reserves. Sending to the wrong network is the most frequent and most expensive mistake with this token.

Networks USDT runs in

• USDT TRC20 — TRC20 means tokens on the TRON network. Confirmation takes seconds, and the fee is charged in TRX or covered by staked energy; it comes out cheaper than in Ethereum — which is why most USDT is sent over TRC20.
• USDT Optimism — Optimism is another layer-2 network on top of Ethereum. Addresses are in the familiar format, the fee is in ETH and amounts to a small part of the cost in the main network.
• USDT Arbitrum — Arbitrum One is a layer-2 network on top of Ethereum. The address format is the Ethereum one and the fee is in ETH, but many times cheaper than in the main network.
• USDT AVAX C — Avalanche C-Chain is the EVM-compatible chain of Avalanche, and the fee is charged in AVAX.
• USDT NEAR
• USDT ERC20 — ERC20 means tokens on the Ethereum network. The standard is accepted by almost every wallet and exchange, but gas is paid in ETH, and under heavy load its cost rises noticeably.
• USDT BEP20 — BEP20 means tokens on BNB Smart Chain, an EVM-compatible network. The address is indistinguishable by sight from an Ethereum one, the fee is charged in BNB and usually stays small.
• USDT SOL — On Solana, tokens are issued under the SPL standard. A transfer is confirmed within seconds, and the fee is measured in fractions of a cent and paid in SOL. A separate account is opened for each new token, and that takes a little SOL as well.