The live price of Tether today is $1.00 USD. Tether is up 0.00% in the last 24 hours compared to $USD. Tether has a live market cap of $80,140,093,606.20 USD, and a circulating supply of 80,140,093,606 USDT.
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What Is Tether (USDT)?
USD-T (stablecoin) is a cryptocurrency with a stable value that mirrors the price of the U.S. dollar. The company Tether issues this token, and they maintain a reserve of commercial paper, fiduciary deposits, cash, reserve repo notes, and treasury bills to keep the value of USD-T in circulation equal to the number of USD-T tokens in circulation.
USDT is meant to combine the unrestricted nature of cryptocurrencies with the stable value of the US dollar.
Who Are The Founders Of Tether?
USDT was created in 2014 by Brock Pierce, Reeve Collins and Craig Sellars.
Brock Pierce is a successful entrepreneur who has been involved in many high-profile projects related to crypto and entertainment. In 2013, he co-founded a venture capital firm that helps finance new crypto and entertainment projects. The following year, Pierce became the director of the Bitcoin Foundation, which aims to improve and promote Bitcoin. In 2017, he co-founded Block.one, the company behind EOS, one of the most popular cryptocurrencies.
Tether’s CEO was Reeve Collins for the first two years of its existence. He previously co-founded several successful businesses, such as the online ad network Traffic Marketplace, entertainment studio RedLever, and gaming website Pala Interactive. In 2020, Collins is leading SmarMedia Technologies, a marketing and advertising technology firm.
Craig Sellars has been with the Omni Foundation for over six years, aside from working on Tether. The Omni Protocol enables users to create and trade smart-contract based assets and currencies on top of Bitcoin’s blockchain. Sellars has also worked at Bitfinex, Factom, Synereo, and the MaidSafe Foundation among other cryptocurrency firms and organizations.
What Makes Tether Unique?
The USDT token is unique in that its value is kept pegged to the US dollar by Tether. The fact that its value is guaranteed by Tether to remain linked to the US dollar is what sets it apart. According on Tether, whenever it creates new USDT tokens, it matches a corresponding amount of money in its reserves, ensuring that USDT is fully backed by cash and cash equivalents.
The notoriously volatile cryptocurrency markets make cryptocurrencies liable to sudden changes of 10-20% in value on a single day, making them unsuitable as a store of money. USDT is, however, sheltered from these fluctuations.
USDT’s stability and liquidity provide a secure haven for cryptocurrency investors during periods of high volatility: they can park their portfolios in Tether without having to completely sell into USD. Furthermore, via its blockchain, USDT enables easy transaction of a US dollar equivalent between regions, countries, and even continents without the need for an intermediator like a bank or financial services provider.
However, over the years, there have been concerns about the validity of Tether’s claims about their USD reserves. This has sometimes disrupted USDT’s price. The lowest point it ever went was $0.88. Many people are concerned that Tether’s reserves have never been fully audited by an independent third party.
What is the FUD about Tether?
Tether has been the target of a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) due to its unclear financial situation and lack of a public audit. The company has repeatedly been fined for false statements around the state of its books. After Tether released a first breakdown of its balances, it came under even more scrutiny from regulators over its claims that all issued stablecoins are fully backed by dollar reserves.
People are still unsure if Tether is innocent after a report said they were. The company has had problems before, but people think that they are too important to fail.
How Many Tether (USDT) Coins Are There In Circulation?
There is no limit on how many USDT tokens there can be. This is because they are owned by a private company. But because Tether says that each USDT is backed by one U.S. dollar, the number of tokens is limited by how much cash the company has.
Tether does not disclose how many tethers will be created ahead of time. Instead, they provide a transparency report every day that lists the total amount of assets and liabilities. The latter corresponds to the number of USDT in circulation.
According to Tether, as of September 2020, there are over 14.4 billion USDT tokens in circulation, backed by $14.6 billion in assets.
How Is the Tether Network Secured?
USDT is not based on its own blockchain; rather, it runs as a second-layer token on top of the blockchains of other cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, EOS, Tron, Algorand, Bitcoin Cash and OMG.
Where Can You Buy Tether (USDT)?
You can buy Tether / USDT on many different cryptocurrency exchanges. In fact, the average daily trading volume of USDT is often equal to or more than that of Bitcoin. This is especially true on exchanges that don’t have fiat-to-crypto trading pairs, as it provides a way to trade in USD without having to convert to Bitcoin or another currency.
