Tether's USAT Stablecoin Expands Beyond Ethereum Mainnet to Celo
Tether has expanded its USAT stablecoin—a regulated, U.S. market-focused digital dollar issued by Anchorage Digital—onto the Celo blockchain, marking USAT’s first deployment beyond Ethereum mainnet. Celo, an Ethereum layer-2 network with significant mobile penetration via Opera MiniPay’s 14 million global wallet users, is supported by Google Cloud infrastructure. Plans call for USAT to be used as a gas currency on Celo. The technical rollout features a faucet system with privacy-preserving user verification developed with Self and Google Cloud; Celo governance will move to enable USAT as a network gas token. USAT’s recent attestation report by Deloitte found $17.6 million in reserves backing $17.5 million in tokens as of January 31, 2024. Tether’s main stablecoin, USDT, has a $184 billion market cap and is widely used for dollar access in global markets lacking traditional banking infrastructure. Tether recently announced it has secured one of the Big Four firms for an upcoming audit, reportedly KPMG, though the firm has not been officially confirmed.
