Tether (USDT) is a StablecoinStablecoinA cryptocurrency designed to keep a steady price, usually by tracking the US dollar or another currency. designed to hold its value at one US dollar. It is issued by the company Tether and is by far the world's largest stablecoin. At the start of November 2026 about 180 billion USDT were in circulation, roughly 61% of all stablecoins, and only bitcoin and ether had a higher market capMarket capitalisationThe total value of all units of a coin in circulation, calculated as the price of one unit times the number of units..
History and use
Tether appeared in 2014 under the name Realcoin and was renamed in November that year. In January 2025 the company announced that it was moving its headquarters to El Salvador, where it had obtained a licence.
USDT is issued on many blockchains, including Ethereum and Tron. It is widely used for trading on foreign crypto exchanges and for sending dollars across borders, especially where dollars are hard to get.
What backs USDT?
Tether says it holds assets against every USDT, mostly short-term US government bonds, but also gold and bitcoin. The accounting firm BDO checks the position every quarter. That is an attestation of the balance on a given day, not a full audit.
Tether has been penalised before for false claims about these assets:
- February 2021. Tether and the exchange Bitfinex agreed to pay 18.5 million dollars to the New York Attorney General, partly over false claims that USDT was always fully backed.
- October 2021. The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) fined Tether 41 million dollars. According to the CFTC, the company held enough reserves on only 27.6% of the days in a 26-month period between 2016 and 2018.
USDT and MiCA
In Europe, a stablecoin that tracks a single currency must be issued as an e-money tokenE-money token (EMT)A stablecoin that tracks a single official currency, such as the dollar or the euro. Under MiCA, only banks and e-money institutions may issue one. by an authorised firm. Tether is not on the European Securities and Markets Authority's (ESMA) register of such issuers. Major exchanges therefore stopped offering USDT trading to users in the EEA in March 2025, and in October 2026 ESMA reiterated that service providers should stop all services linked to stablecoins that don't comply with MiCA.
USDCUSDCA stablecoin issued by the US company Circle that tracks the US dollar, so one USDC should always be worth about one dollar., by contrast, is issued under MiCA, and at Myntkaup USDC is the account's base currency.
Everything in Myntkaup Learn is written and regularly reviewed by the Myntkaup editorial team. It is for education and is not investment advice. Editorial policy. Updated 2 November 2026.