News
Tether Expands Its USDT and XAUT Stablecoins to TON Network Targeting Telegram’s 900 Million Users
Tether, the company behind the $108 billion market capitalization USDTsaid it is expanding the dollar-pegged stablecoin and its gold-backed sister XAUT natively onto The Open Network (TON), a blockchain adjacent to the Telegram messaging app.
Tether’s transparency page today it emerged that USDT worth 10 million dollars are authorized on the TON blockchain, of which 3 million have already been issued.
With this move, Tether aims to power USDT and of the rapidly growing TON ecosystem, where users will be able to use stablecoins in decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.
“The launch of USDT and XAUT on TON will enable seamless value transfer, increasing activity and liquidity, while offering users a financial experience that can match those of the traditional financial system,” he said in the notes Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino. “This furthers our mission to power an open financial infrastructure in the blockchain space.”
The Open Network is a layer 1 decentralized network started by Telegram but operates independently of the company abandoned development due to regulatory concerns. The ecosystem has seen rapid growth lately with incentives for onboarding Telegram users, increasing the number of monthly active addresses to more than 1.7 million from less than 100,000 six months ago, according to blockchain data from Tonstat. Even Telegram recently switched to the network’s native token, toncoin (TONNE), gives him euros as payment for his advertising platform.
The TON token was up earlier in the day, only to drop as much as 15% following the news. It is still up 7% in the past 24 hours and has tripled in price this year, boasting a market capitalization of nearly $25 billion.
Although the crypto wallet on Telegram supports various blockchains for deposits and withdrawals, “to encourage adoption of TON, trading fees are substantially reduced,” Halil Mirakhmed, COO of Wallet in Telegram, which operates independently of Telegram. “Within the Ton Space ecosystem only USDT is available on TON, optimizing the user experience for those invested in the TON ecosystem,” he added.
Following the announcement, Ramp Network, a fintech company that connects cryptocurrencies to traditional banking channels, said on Friday that it will allow USDT purchases and withdrawals to TON. The company will begin by enabling switching from fiat currencies to USDT to TON on its website and will integrate with third-party wallets that support TON-based assets and plans to add off-ramp functionality at a later date.
“Cryptocurrency transactions should be as simple as texting,” Ramp CEO Szymon Sypniewicz said in a statement. “We can’t wait to see how enabling access to instant, low-cost crypto transactions can improve the lives of hundreds of millions of users in the TON ecosystem.”
UPDATE (April 19, 11:23 UTC): Adds that the issue began in the second paragraph, changes the wording of the title.
UPDATE (April 19, 11:40 UTC): Change the source of the press release, adapt the title to fit the release.
UPDATE (April 19, 2.18pm UTC): Update TON price action after announcement.
UPDATE (April 19 145:00 UTC): Adds Ramp Network’s announcement about adding USDT to TON support in the last two paragraphs.