What's new with Tether (USDT)?
According to data from CoinMarketCap, a monitoring service for May 2025, Tether accounts for more than 60% of the total capitalization of stablecoins, and the number of USDT token holders exceeded 109 million by the beginning of the year.
Tether in the Bitcoin ecosystem
In early 2025, the eponymous company behind the most capitalized stablecoin in the crypto market added support for USDT tokens on both the Bitcoin blockchain's base layer (Layer-1) and a second-layer (Layer-2) protocol called the Lightning Network (LN).
The introduction of the new Taproot Assets protocol developed by the Lightning Labs team made the integration of the Tether stablecoin into the native Bitcoin blockchain possible. Thanks to the Taproot Assets protocol, it became possible to integrate various tokens directly into the Bitcoin protocol, which was previously impossible without third-party tools such as BRC-20 and Ordinals solutions.
Earlier, the issuer Tether had already added official support for USDT in the TON and Aptos networks, which further increased the stablecoin's market capitalization and strengthened its dominance in its segment.
Web3 project from Tether co-founder
In February 2025, the ex-director of Tether announced plans to launch a new crypto project called Pi Protocol, which he sees as "the evolution of stablecoins." A new USP stablecoin will be at the center of the Pi Protocol ecosystem.
According to the issuer, the USP stablecoin's reserves will comprise income-generating RWAs, including bonds, money funds, and tokenized insurance products. USP will be the first stablecoin in the crypto industry backed by these kinds of assets.
Pi Protocol is thus well positioned to lead one of the fastest-growing sectors in the crypto industry, known as RWA (real-world assets). This sector has already attracted the attention of major companies such as BlackRock and JPMorgan.
Stablecoin USP will utilize an automated over-collateralization mechanism powered by a specially created smart contract and, according to the developers, become one of USDT's main competitors.
Will Tether remain in the U.S. market?
New bills that are being drafted in the U.S. market and are scheduled for release at the end of 2025 may shake Tether's position in the cryptocurrency market. The forthcoming bills require complete transparency of reserves from stablecoin issuers, something Tether has seen problems with.
However, Pi Protocol's new stablecoin project is benefiting from this, as it is already being designed to comply with future laws, among which are planned:
- The Stablecoin Transparency and Accountability for a Better Spreadsheet Economy Act (STABLE);
- The Leadership and Creating National Innovation for U.S. Stable Coins Act (GENIUS).
Analysts at JPMorgan expect that if one of these bills passes, Tether will have to sell its bitcoins and several other liquid assets it owns. According to various estimates, only between 66% and 83% of the issuer's assets meet the requirements of the new bills. The likelihood of USDT being blocked on the U.S. market was confirmed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) itself.
However, the possibility of banning USDT in the U.S. market does not worry Tether's managers because, in April, they reported on their readiness to issue a new crypto-asset specifically for this sector, but its name is not specified yet.
This means that even if USDT's dominance decreases in the stablecoin market, the Tether issuer will be able to compensate for its position in the crypto industry by launching new products and taking leading positions in certain sectors.
