USDT: The Crypto That Is Not Supposed to Make You Rich — So Why Does the World Need It?

There is something intellectually strange about stablecoins.

Bitcoin is easy to understand, even if you dislike it. You buy Bitcoin because you believe that tomorrow somebody might pay more for it. Ethereum can be interpreted as both an asset and infrastructure. Meme coins reduce the proposition almost to its purest speculative form.

But Tether’s USD₮ is different.

You buy one USDT for approximately one US dollar. If the system works exactly as intended, one year later it should still be worth approximately one dollar.

No capital gain.

No revolutionary investment thesis.

No dividend paid to the ordinary holder.

No interest merely for owning the token.

The best possible outcome, apparently, is that nothing happens to its price.

And yet by the end of 2025 Tether reported a USD₮ market capitalization of $187.3 billion, approximately 534.5 million estimated users, 139.1 million on-chain holders and $4.4 trillion transferred on-chain during Q4 alone. (Tether⁠)

That apparent contradiction is the right place to start.

Because stablecoins may have been marketed as a crypto innovation, but their extraordinary growth tells us at least as much about the deficiencies of conventional money and banking as it does about blockchain.

The paradox: why buy an asset designed not to appreciate?

Imagine two assets.

Asset A can appreciate 50%, collapse 60%, recover 100% and collapse again.

Asset B is engineered to remain at $1.

For an investor seeking capital gains, Asset A is obviously more interesting.

But now change the question.

Suppose you live in a country where your national currency loses 30%, 50% or 100% of its purchasing power against the dollar.

Suppose purchasing physical dollars is restricted.

Suppose opening a US bank account is difficult.

Suppose you need to send $2,000 abroad on Sunday evening.

Suppose your supplier lives on another continent.

Suppose your bank charges substantial FX and transfer fees.

Suppose a wire transfer requires one or several banking days.

Suppose you trade crypto assets continuously and do not want to move money repeatedly between an exchange and a bank.

Suddenly the boring asset becomes extraordinarily useful.

USDT is not primarily an investment in the dollar going up. It is an investment in obtaining access to the dollar without necessarily obtaining access to an American bank.

That distinction explains much of its success.

2014: solving a problem nobody outside crypto initially cared about

Tether was founded in 2014.

The original problem was remarkably practical.

Crypto exchanges had Bitcoin but moving actual dollars between exchanges was cumbersome. Banking relationships with crypto businesses were fragile, transfers were slow, markets operated continuously while banks did not.

Tether itself describes its original objective as enabling arbitrage between cryptocurrency exchanges while overcoming inefficiencies in the banking system. (Tether⁠)

The conceptual innovation was simple:

put the dollar on the blockchain.

Not literally, of course.

A dollar remained somewhere in the traditional financial system—or assets intended to support that liability were held by the issuer—while a blockchain token represented a dollar-like claim.

Suddenly $1 could behave operationally more like Bitcoin.

It could move internationally.

It could move on weekends.

It could sit in a digital wallet.

It could move between exchanges.

It could interact with smart contracts.

And it could do all of this without exposing its owner to Bitcoin’s price volatility.

This was the first killer application of stablecoins:

crypto market plumbing.

And it remains enormously important.

The IMF estimates that current stablecoin usage is still predominantly connected with crypto trading. Its 2025 study noted that roughly 80% of observed transactions were associated with bots and automated systems performing activities such as arbitrage and rebalancing. (IMF⁠)

Tether’s own figures are revealing. In Q4 2025, USDT participated in about $3.2 trillion of centralized spot trading, representing 61.5% of spot-market volume in its dataset. (Tether⁠)

So before describing USDT as a new global payment currency, an inconvenient fact needs to be acknowledged:

a huge part of stablecoin activity remains financial infrastructure for crypto itself.

But that is no longer the whole story.

Stablecoin 2.0: the offshore digital dollar

The second use case is economically much more interesting.

USDT has gradually become something resembling an easily transportable offshore dollar account.

This matters little to somebody living in Switzerland, Germany or the United States with a stable currency, sophisticated banking system and unrestricted access to financial markets.

It can matter enormously elsewhere.

Around 98% of stablecoin value is denominated in US dollars, according to the BIS. (Bank for International Settlements⁠)

That tells us something profound.

The stablecoin revolution has not dethroned the dollar.

It has digitized and internationalized it.

Crypto promised monetary decentralization.

Its most successful stablecoin application may instead be accelerating dollarization.

For somebody in an economy suffering high inflation or repeated currency crises, the comparison isn’t necessarily:

USDT versus US Treasury bonds.

It may be:

USDT versus pesos.

USDT versus lira.

USDT versus bolívares.

USDT versus a bank account with capital restrictions.

USDT versus physical dollars hidden at home.

That is a radically different economic calculation.

The BIS now explicitly identifies access to dollar liquidity and the use of stablecoins as a store of value in emerging and developing economies as important use cases. (Bank for International Settlements⁠)

This is why stablecoins deserve to be analysed alongside dollarization, not merely alongside Bitcoin.

Argentina explains USDT better than Silicon Valley does

Consider Argentina.

For decades Argentines have developed sophisticated informal strategies for protecting savings against peso depreciation.

Physical dollars.

Foreign accounts.

The blue-dollar market.

Property priced mentally or explicitly in dollars.

USDT simply adds another mechanism:

digital dollars accessible through a smartphone.

The economic logic is not speculation on USDT.

The speculation—if we want to call it that—is against the local currency.

If the peso falls 30% against the dollar while USDT continues trading around $1, the Argentine holder experiences a substantial increase measured in pesos even though USDT itself has done precisely nothing.

This explains one of the great misunderstandings surrounding stablecoins.

Their value proposition is almost invisible when viewed from New York.

It becomes obvious when viewed from Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Lagos or Caracas.

Chainalysis identifies inflation hedging, remittances and savings among important drivers of adoption across several major crypto markets. (Chainalysis⁠)

The geographic map of stablecoin usefulness therefore tends to overlap with a map of financial friction.

Weak currencies.

Capital controls.

Expensive banking.

Limited access to dollars.

Large remittance markets.

Cross-border informal commerce.

Those are fertile environments for stablecoins.

The third use case: moving money

Now we reach perhaps the most disruptive feature.

Traditional international money movement remains surprisingly archaic.

A payment can involve:

sender → sender’s bank → correspondent bank → correspondent bank → beneficiary bank → beneficiary.

Each intermediary may perform compliance, reconciliation, foreign exchange and settlement functions.

All of that has value.

But it also has cost.

According to the World Bank, the global average cost of sending remittances remained around 6.36% in its latest reported data. (Remittance Prices World Bank⁠)

That means transferring $500 internationally can still consume an economically meaningful percentage of the money being sent.

Blockchain changes the architecture.

A USDT transaction can theoretically become:

wallet → blockchain → wallet.

No Saturday.

No Sunday.

No bank closing time.

No correspondent bank in the middle of the blockchain transfer itself.

No distinction between sending money 50 metres and 5,000 kilometres.

That doesn’t make the transaction free.

There are network fees.

Exchange spreads.

On-ramp costs.

Off-ramp costs.

Compliance costs.

Possible taxation.

And somebody ultimately needs to convert USDT into something useful if the recipient wants local fiat.

Nevertheless, the architecture is fundamentally different.

Is USDT therefore simply Western Union on a blockchain?

No.

And this is where the subject becomes considerably larger.

Stablecoins combine functions that conventional finance usually separates.

A single USDT balance can be simultaneously:

cash-like liquidity

a dollar savings instrument

crypto trading collateral

an international settlement instrument

a remittance vehicle

working capital

a DeFi asset

an exchange quote currency

and increasingly,

a source of funds for a payment card.

The distinction between bank account, wallet, payment rail and settlement asset begins to blur.

That is the real innovation.

But are USDT payments anonymous?

This requires precision.

The answer is:

not really.

USDT transactions on public blockchains such as Ethereum and Tron are generally visible on-chain.

Anyone can see wallet addresses, transaction values, timestamps and movements.

What isn’t automatically displayed is:

“This wallet belongs to Mr John Smith, passport number X.”

The appropriate description is therefore generally pseudonymous, not anonymous.

And blockchain analytics companies have become remarkably sophisticated at associating addresses, exchanges and transaction patterns.

The moment a user enters or leaves the ecosystem through a regulated exchange, regulatory compliance requirements can create a bridge between identity and blockchain address.

Tether itself can also freeze tokens associated with certain addresses.

So the popular idea that stablecoins constitute invisible digital cash is misleading.

Physical cash can actually provide greater transactional anonymity.

The real advantage is different:

stablecoins can reduce dependence on the banking payment infrastructure without eliminating financial traceability.

That distinction matters enormously.

Then why are stablecoins attractive for illicit activity?

For essentially the same reasons that make them attractive for legitimate activity.

They are fast.

Global.

Liquid.

Dollar-denominated.

Available 24/7.

Easy to transfer.

TRM Labs estimates that 99% of stablecoin activity is licit, but stablecoins nevertheless represented around 60% of identified illicit crypto transaction volume in Q1 2025. (TRM Labs⁠)

Both statements can be true simultaneously.

The overwhelming majority of stablecoin activity can be legitimate while criminals prefer stablecoins within the subset of crypto they use.

This is not particularly mysterious.

Criminals use dollars too.

The relevant question isn’t whether criminals use a technology.

It is whether the technology structurally facilitates crime and whether enforcement can follow the money.

And public blockchains leave an unusually permanent transaction history.

The elephant in the room: capital controls

Here the debate becomes politically uncomfortable.

Suppose a government restricts its citizens’ ability to purchase dollars.

Traditionally, enforcing that restriction depends substantially upon controlling banks and currency dealers.

But if somebody can acquire USDT peer-to-peer and transfer it to a self-custodied wallet, enforcement becomes considerably more difficult.

The OECD specifically notes growing use of stablecoins for currency exchange and remittances in jurisdictions with tighter capital controls. (OECD⁠)

That makes stablecoins much more than cheaper payments.

They can become a form of private capital mobility infrastructure.

And that is why central banks increasingly care.

The BIS warns that widespread adoption could accelerate digital dollarization, particularly in emerging markets, reducing monetary sovereignty and potentially affecting monetary policy, capital flows and financial stability. (Bank for International Settlements⁠)

Imagine a country experiencing a currency crisis.

Twenty years ago citizens might queue outside banks to purchase dollars.

Tomorrow they may press:

USDT — BUY.

Capital flight becomes software.

That is not a trivial innovation.

The fourth use case: the dollar bank account for people without a dollar bank account

This may ultimately be USDT’s most important social function.

Hundreds of millions of people cannot easily open a US dollar bank account.

But downloading a wallet is technologically trivial.

Tether estimated 534.5 million USD₮ users by the end of Q4 2025. (Tether⁠)

Obviously, “user” does not mean 534 million people independently using USDT every day; Tether’s methodology combines on-chain users with estimates of users on centralized services.

Still, the scale is extraordinary.

Tether also reported 139.1 million on-chain holders.

And perhaps the most interesting statistic is this:

approximately 33% of USDT was held by wallets Tether classifies as savers at the end of Q4 2025, amounting to roughly $62.1 billion. (Tether⁠)

These people aren’t necessarily waiting for USDT to rise.

They are waiting for something else not to fall.

Their domestic currency.

USDT as working capital

There is another underappreciated market.

Small international businesses.

Imagine:

a Colombian importer buying from China;

an Argentine freelancer working for a Mexican company;

a Turkish merchant buying inventory abroad;

a Nigerian digital agency serving European clients.

Traditional cross-border banking introduces friction through FX conversion, transfer costs, banking hours and correspondent networks.

A stablecoin can function as a neutral settlement layer.

Invoice: $10,000.

Payment: 10,000 USDT.

Settlement: blockchain.

Supplier receives a dollar-linked asset.

Neither side necessarily cares about cryptocurrency ideology.

They care that the invoice gets paid.

This is perhaps where the word cryptocurrency becomes misleading.

For many users USDT isn’t really treated psychologically as crypto.

It is treated as internet dollars.

But the gigantic transaction numbers need a warning label

Stablecoin advocates often cite enormous transaction volumes.

The numbers are real, but interpretation matters.

The BIS estimates stablecoins generated around $35 trillion in annual transaction volume in 2025.

That sounds astonishing.

Until we isolate transactions connected with actual payments.

The BIS estimates payment-related stablecoin flows at only around $390 billion for the year. (Bank for International Settlements⁠)

Visa has made the same methodological point.

Raw stablecoin transfer data contain bots, arbitrage, automated activity and other transactions that should not be confused with consumers purchasing goods.

In one Visa analysis, $3.9 trillion of raw monthly transfer volume fell to approximately $817.5 billion after its adjustment methodology. Retail-sized transfers represented less than 1% of adjusted volume over the period examined. (Visa Corporate⁠)

This changes the narrative considerably.

Stablecoins are enormous as financial infrastructure.

They are still relatively small as everyday money.

For now.

And then came the cards

The most ironic development in stablecoin history may be the debit card.

Crypto originally proposed replacing financial intermediaries.

Then crypto discovered that consumers rather like tapping Visa cards.

The new model is therefore:

USDT/USDC wallet
↓
crypto/stablecoin card
↓
Visa/Mastercard
↓
merchant receives fiat.

The customer spends digital dollars.

The coffee shop doesn’t need to know blockchain exists.

This is extraordinarily important because it solves stablecoins’ acceptance problem.

Instead of convincing millions of merchants to accept USDT directly, stablecoin companies can connect wallets to the payment infrastructure merchants already accept.

Visa reported stablecoin-linked cards processing about $5.2 billion during 2025, up 319% year-on-year. (Visa⁠)

By September 2026, Visa says more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs were operating globally, with payment volume growing nearly 200% year-on-year and stablecoin settlement exceeding a $20 billion annualized run rate. (Visa⁠)

That is no longer an experiment.

Latin America is becoming the laboratory

Visa and Bridge initially launched stablecoin-linked card programs across markets including:

Argentina
Colombia
Ecuador
Mexico
Peru
Chile.

(Visa Corporate⁠)

That list isn’t accidental.

These are precisely the markets where the economic case for dollar-linked digital money can be stronger than in wealthy economies with stable currencies.

By March 2026 the Bridge/Visa program was live in 18 countries with plans for expansion to more than 100. (Visa Corporate⁠)

This creates a fascinating hybrid.

The balance sheet may be crypto-native.

The wallet may be blockchain-native.

The settlement can increasingly be blockchain-based.

But the consumer experience remains:

tap card → buy coffee.

The revolution, if it comes, may therefore occur entirely behind the user interface.

What happened to the idea of replacing Visa?

It is increasingly being replaced by something much more pragmatic:

using Visa.

And Visa itself is adapting.

Visa launched USDC settlement for US financial institutions in December 2025, allowing participating institutions to settle obligations through USDC on Solana. (Visa Corporate⁠)

Mastercard similarly supports crypto-card programs enabling cryptocurrency and stablecoin balances to connect with its global merchant network. (Mastercard⁠)

This is a major strategic reversal in the crypto narrative.

The future may not be:

blockchain versus Visa.

It may be:

blockchain underneath Visa.

Coinbase Card did not prove cards had failed

There is also some confusion around Coinbase and crypto debit cards.

Programs, availability and geographic coverage have changed repeatedly over the years, but the concept itself clearly has not disappeared.

Coinbase currently offers eligible US customers a Visa debit card allowing spending from fiat or crypto balances, including USDC, with crypto converted into dollars when necessary. (Coinbase⁠)

The broader evidence actually points in the opposite direction from “failure”.

Stablecoin cards are expanding.

But something important has changed.

The early proposition was:

spend your Bitcoin.

That is economically awkward.

Why spend an asset you believe will appreciate?

The newer proposition is much more coherent:

hold stable digital dollars and spend them through an existing payment network.

Stablecoins may therefore make crypto cards more economically logical than speculative cryptocurrencies ever did.

Was all this merely about reducing banking fees?

No.

That explanation is too small.

Stablecoins potentially address at least seven separate frictions.

1. Settlement time

Blockchain networks operate continuously.

Banks still live partly inside business-day architecture.

2. Geographic friction

A blockchain does not inherently care whether recipient and sender are in the same country.

3. Currency access

USDT gives users exposure to a dollar-denominated asset without requiring a conventional US dollar bank account.

4. Capital mobility

Self-custody can make capital significantly more portable.

5. Crypto liquidity

Stablecoins provide the principal bridge between volatile digital assets.

6. Programmability

Digital assets can interact with smart contracts and automated financial infrastructure.

7. Banking exclusion

A smartphone and wallet can sometimes provide access where traditional financial infrastructure is inadequate.

Reducing fees is part of the story.

It isn’t the story.

The business model nobody should ignore

Here is another fascinating feature.

The holder gives Tether approximately $1.

The holder receives approximately 1 USDT.

The holder receives no automatic interest from Tether simply for possessing that USDT.

Tether invests the reserve assets.

In Q4 2025, Tether reported approximately $192.9 billion in reserves, including exposure to roughly $141.6 billion in US Treasuries. (Tether⁠)

Think about the economics.

Consumers effectively supply dollar funding.

Tether issues the digital representation.

Tether can earn income on reserve assets.

The consumer receives utility rather than interest:

liquidity, portability, dollar exposure and blockchain settlement.

It is an extraordinary business model.

In simplified terms:

Tether monetizes the convenience of digital dollars.

And as interest rates rose, holding enormous quantities of short-duration government securities became exceptionally profitable.

Stablecoin economics therefore resemble banking in one crucial respect:

the liability is somebody else’s asset, while the reserves generate income for the institution.

But without being identical to a conventional bank.

And this leads to the uncomfortable question: is Tether a shadow bank?

Not exactly.

But the comparison is not absurd.

A bank takes deposits and creates liabilities while investing or lending against its asset base.

A stablecoin issuer creates token liabilities and maintains reserve assets intended to support redemption.

The structures, regulation, liquidity transformation and credit creation are different.

Yet once an institution manages almost $200 billion in reserves, holds enormous amounts of US government debt and supplies dollar-like instruments globally, calling it merely a “crypto company” becomes analytically inadequate.

Tether reported $141.6 billion of US Treasury exposure at the end of Q4 2025—enough that, if compared with sovereign holders, the company said it would rank around the eighteenth largest globally. (Tether⁠)

Crypto has quietly created a significant participant in the US Treasury market.

That deserves considerably more attention than the daily Bitcoin price.

But trust remains the Achilles heel

Stable does not mean risk-free.

USDT is worth approximately $1 because users believe it can remain redeemable around that value.

That depends upon:

reserve quality,

liquidity,

custody,

operational resilience,

regulation,

banking relationships,

and ultimately confidence.

Tether’s history contains genuine controversies.

In 2021 the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission ordered Tether to pay a $41 million civil monetary penalty over misleading claims concerning its reserves during an earlier period.

The CFTC found that during the examined 2016–2018 period, Tether held sufficient fiat reserves to support circulating tokens on only 27.6% of the sampled days under the representations then being made. (Commodity Futures Trading Commission⁠)

That history should not be erased simply because today’s reserve composition is different.

Nor should historical problems automatically be treated as evidence that today’s reserves are identical to those of 2017.

Serious analysis requires both statements.

Stable does not mean guaranteed

There are several risks.

Issuer risk.

You depend upon the entity behind the stablecoin.

Reserve risk.

The quality and liquidity of backing assets matter.

Redemption risk.

The token’s market price depends upon confidence that redemption works.

Regulatory risk.

Governments can restrict issuance, exchanges or distribution.

Blockchain risk.

Networks and smart-contract infrastructure introduce technical vulnerabilities.

Custody risk.

Lose access to a self-hosted wallet and there may be no bank manager to call.

Counterparty risk.

Holding USDT on an exchange adds the risk of the exchange itself.

Depegging risk.

“Stable” is a target, not a law of physics.

This is why comparing USDT with an insured bank deposit is inappropriate.

They solve overlapping problems but have fundamentally different legal and risk structures.

The regulatory paradox

Regulators face an awkward choice.

If stablecoins remain small, they can be treated as a niche crypto instrument.

If they become genuinely useful, they begin competing with elements of the banking and monetary system.

And if citizens of emerging economies increasingly hold dollar stablecoins instead of domestic bank deposits, central banks face something larger still:

privately mediated digital dollarization.

The BIS warns that widespread stablecoin adoption could affect bank funding, credit provision, monetary policy and capital flows. (Bank for International Settlements⁠)

This isn’t theoretical.

If households transfer savings:

bank deposits → stablecoins,

commercial banks lose deposits.

Deposits help fund loans.

Less funding can affect credit creation.

Meanwhile the stablecoin issuer purchases Treasury securities.

The financial flow becomes:

local household → stablecoin → issuer → US Treasury market.

That is a remarkable transformation of global capital intermediation.

The United States may actually benefit

Here lies perhaps the greatest geopolitical irony.

Crypto was supposed to challenge government money.

Dollar stablecoins may strengthen America’s monetary reach.

A worker in Argentina buys USDT.

A business in Nigeria settles invoices in USDT.

A trader in Vietnam keeps liquidity in USDT.

None necessarily has a US bank account.

Yet all are effectively adopting a dollar unit of account.

And behind many of those tokens sit US government securities.

The result could be:

digital dollarization without American banks.

The BIS argues that because around 98% of stablecoins are dollar-denominated, their expansion is likely initially to reinforce existing international currency hierarchies rather than overturn them. (Bank for International Settlements⁠)

Bitcoin imagined a post-dollar monetary world.

Stablecoins may instead deliver a more dollarized world than ever.

That may be the most delicious irony in crypto economics.

Who actually needs USDT?

The answer now becomes clearer.

Probably not the European saver with an insured euro bank account who wants an investment return.

Potentially very useful to:

the Argentine protecting savings from peso depreciation;

the international trader moving liquidity between exchanges;

the migrant sending money home;

the freelancer receiving international payments;

the company settling cross-border invoices;

the citizen seeking digital dollar exposure;

the DeFi participant needing collateral;

the merchant operating across weak banking infrastructures;

the investor temporarily exiting volatile crypto assets;

and, yes, sometimes people seeking to move money outside conventional financial channels.

These aren’t the same users.

That is precisely why the market became so large.

What USDT is NOT

It isn’t Bitcoin.

It isn’t a bank deposit.

It isn’t a Treasury bill owned directly by the holder.

It isn’t necessarily anonymous.

It isn’t government-guaranteed money.

It isn’t inherently an investment.

And it isn’t simply a cheaper credit card.

It is better understood as:

a privately issued, blockchain-transferable dollar-linked financial instrument whose primary value lies in mobility, liquidity and access rather than appreciation.

Once defined that way, the apparent paradox disappears.

The bigger question: why does the world need private digital dollars at all?

This is the question I find far more interesting than whether USDT trades at $0.9998 or $1.0002 tomorrow morning.

Why did hundreds of millions of users find a financial instrument useful whose principal innovation is essentially:

“a dollar that moves differently”?

Because the conventional dollar does not move equally well everywhere.

Banking is highly efficient for some people.

Expensive for others.

Fast domestically.

Often slower internationally.

Open to some.

Restricted to others.

Digital during business hours in some processes while the global economy never closes.

Stablecoins discovered a market in these inconsistencies.

They didn’t invent demand for dollars.

They discovered a new distribution system for them.

My conclusion: stablecoins are not primarily a crypto story

This is where I depart from both crypto evangelists and many traditional critics.

The evangelists describe USDT as part of a decentralized financial revolution.

It isn’t entirely decentralized.

There is an issuer.

There are reserves.

There are custodians.

There are compliance systems.

Addresses can be frozen.

Cards rely on Visa and Mastercard.

The traditional financial system remains everywhere.

Critics, however, sometimes dismiss stablecoins as speculative crypto instruments with no real-world function.

That is equally incomplete.

An asset with almost no intended capital appreciation has managed to attract nearly $200 billion precisely because its utility is the product.

USDT sells no dream of becoming rich.

It sells something much more mundane:

access.

Access to dollars.

Access to global liquidity.

Access to crypto markets.

Access to 24-hour settlement.

Access to cross-border value transfer.

Access, in certain countries, to monetary stability unavailable in the domestic currency.

And occasionally access to financial channels that governments would rather users did not have.

That last point explains both the technology’s attraction and the regulatory anxiety surrounding it.

The real revolution may be invisible

Stablecoins probably do not win because supermarkets begin displaying:

WE ACCEPT USDT

They win if consumers stop noticing they are using them.

A Colombian holds digital dollars.

He taps a Visa card.

The merchant receives pesos.

The wallet deducts stablecoins.

The payment network handles acceptance.

Blockchain infrastructure performs part of the settlement.

Nobody at the supermarket discusses crypto.

That is what mature financial infrastructure looks like.

The technology disappears.

And that leads to a final paradox.

Crypto began with an ambition to remove banks, card networks and governments from money.

The stablecoin industry increasingly works with exchanges, custodians, Treasury securities, Visa, Mastercard, regulated issuers and governments.

It didn’t destroy traditional finance.

It is being absorbed into it—and simultaneously forcing traditional finance to rebuild parts of itself.

USDT therefore matters not because one token might someday be worth $10.

If that happened, USDT would have spectacularly failed at its job.

It matters because hundreds of millions of people appear willing to hold an asset whose promise is precisely the opposite:

tomorrow, this should still be one dollar.

And perhaps that tells us the most important thing of all.

The great financial demand of the next decade may not be for a new currency.

It may simply be for the old dollar—

without borders, without banking hours, and increasingly without needing a traditional dollar bank account.

Sources and further reading

International Monetary Fund — Understanding Stablecoins, 2025. (IMF⁠)

Bank for International Settlements — research on stablecoins, digital dollarization and the international monetary system, 2026. (Bank for International Settlements⁠)

OECD — Asia Capital Markets Report 2026: Developments in Crypto-Asset Markets. (OECD⁠)

Tether — USD₮ Q4 2025 Market Report and historical materials. (Tether⁠)

CFTC — Tether and Bitfinex enforcement settlement, 2021. (Commodity Futures Trading Commission⁠)

TRM Labs — 2025 Crypto Adoption and Stablecoin Usage Report. (TRM Labs⁠)

Chainalysis — 2025 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report. (Chainalysis⁠)

World Bank — Remittance Prices Worldwide. (Remittance Prices World Bank⁠)

Visa — stablecoin analytics, stablecoin-linked cards and settlement infrastructure. (Visa Corporate⁠)

Mastercard — Crypto Card Program and stablecoin payment infrastructure. (Mastercard⁠)