News

Davos, Switzerland, 26 May 2022: Tether Operations Limited (“Tether”), the company operating the blockchain-enabled platform tether.to that powers the largest stablecoin by market capitalization of over US $73 billion, has today launched Tether tokens (“MXN₮”) pegged to the Mexican Peso. Initial blockchain support will include Ethereum, Tron, and Polygon. 

MXN₮ will join three other fiat-currency pegged tokens Tether has in the market: the U.S. dollar-pegged USD₮, the Euro-pegged EUR₮, and the offshore Chinese Yuan-pegged CNH₮.

According to data from Triple A, a cryptocurrency payments company, 40% of Mexican companies are looking to adopt blockchain and cryptocurrencies in some form making Mexico a prime location for the next Latin American crypto hub. The multibillion-dollar flow of remittances into Mexico and the difficulties involved with money transfers, have created a unique opportunity for stablecoin usage and adoption. The creation of MXN₮ puts Mexican Peso on the blockchains and provides a faster, less costly option for asset transfers. 

MXN₮ is a stable digital asset that is pegged 1:1 to the Mexican Peso. MXN₮ was built by the trusted team of developers behind Tether USD₮ and it operates under tether.to. 

“We have seen a rise in cryptocurrency usage in Latin America over the last year that has made it apparent that we need to expand our offerings,” said Paolo Ardoino, CTO of Tether. “Introducing a Peso-pegged stablecoin will provide a store of value for those in the emerging markets and in particular Mexico. MXN₮ can minimize volatility for those looking to convert their assets and investments from fiat to digital currencies. Tether customers in this entirely new market will be able to benefit from the same transparent customer experience.” 

The addition of MXN₮ is a milestone for the company as it marks Tether’s entrance into Latin America with a dedicated digital currency. The launch of MXN₮ will provide a testing ground for onboarding new users in the Latin American market and will pave the way for future fiat-pegged currencies in the region to be launched.

To learn more about MXN₮ or to purchase MXN₮, please visit www.tether.to or contact us at https://cs.tether.to/ 

Tether is pleased to report that it is business as usual amid some expected market panic following this week’s market movements.

Tether continues to honour redemptions normally, with verified customers (in allowed jurisdictions) able to redeem USDt on Tether.to for USD$1. In the last 24 hours alone, Tether has honoured over 300m USDt redemptions and is already processing more than 2bn today, without issue.

Tether has maintained its stability through multiple black swan events and highly volatile market conditions and even in its darkest days Tether has never once failed to honour a redemption request from any of its verified customers. Tether will continue to do so which has always been its practice.

Tether is the most liquid stablecoin in the market, backed by a strong, conservative portfolio that consists of cash & cash equivalents, such as short-term treasury bills, money market funds, and commercial paper holdings from A-2 and above rated issuers. The value of Tether's reserves is published daily and updated once per day. You can find the most recent information here: https://tether.to/en/transparency

Paolo Ardoino, Tether CTO, said:

“Tether is gratified that the market continues to show its trust and confidence in Tether: the first, largest, and most transparent, innovative, and liquid stablecoin. We are a quickly evolving industry and as an industry we will learn from these events together.”

Tether Operations Limited (Tether), the technology company supporting the blockchain-enabled platform that powers the largest stablecoin by market capitalisation (USD₮), in collaboration with the vibrant Swiss city of Lugano today announced the establishment of a center of excellence for blockchain adoption in Europe.

Together, Tether and the City of Lugano will work toward the shared goal of scaling the city’s blockchain capabilities and promote Lugano as a major hub for European blockchain adoption.

Tether and Lugano

The goal of this collaboration is to demonstrate real-world use of blockchain technologies by applying it practically to local communities in Lugano. To date, most blockchain projects have focused on foundational efforts that give little attention to local communities and deliver practical applications.

The city is home to several innovative initiatives, including the Lugano Living Lab, which implement projects in the innovation and digital fields through experimentation and prototyping on an urban scale. Lugano’s ecosystem allows Tether to stretch beyond most current blockchain implementations and work hand-in-hand with Lugano for the first full-scale urban practical use case. The application in Lugano will be exhibited through localized services with tailored use cases that can reduce infrastructure costs and expand accessibility to global markets.

Future Scalability

In the near future, the city aims to scale its efforts to enable citizens and companies to fully pay their annual taxes and all goods and services in cryptocurrency. Formal approvals were obtained for only Bitcoin, Tether, and select CHF-based stablecoins to be accepted for such payments, whereby funds will be converted in local FIAT currency via different service providers. This move makes Lugano one of the first in the world to implement a full cryptocurrency payment economy.

The City of Lugano will begin working with Tether and other service providers to help local businesses integrate their existing payment services with the permitted stablecoins to ensure the technological infrastructure is in place to support this.

Lightning Network will be one of the solutions that the City, with the support of Tether, will integrate into the services. Lightning Network has grown to become a prominent, highly scalable and robust payment system overcoming scalability obstacles associated with the blockchain without surrendering security, trustlessness, or privacy.

Lugano and Tether’s Memorandum of Understanding

Lugano and Tether signed a memorandum of understanding which launches a strategic collaboration through several initiatives, including a centrally located specialized hub hosting companies and startups and acting as catalyst for everything related to blockchain to facilitate their establishment and daily operations. Lugano aims to become a home for the crypto community where it can grow and prosper.

A group of prominent companies in the crypto industry led by Tether, will create a multi-million dollar fund to help finance blockchain based startup companies focused on building blockchain services in the region. Additionally, Tether will contribute its expertise, knowledge and support to the City focusing on the education of the new generations through collaborations with local universities and research institutes (500 scholarships will be made available in the immediate future).

The initiative will also serve as a beacon of green financing. The joint effort will focus on using natural resources and environmentally friendly alternatives to power bitcoin mining, allowing for bitcoin to act as a strong accelerator for renewable energy development. This will be another example of how a city, investing in Bitcoin, can use the proceeds of mining to re-invest in the growth of local infrastructure.

"Lugano is investing in its future," said Michele Foletti, Mayor of Lugano. "In recent years, the city has already implemented blockchain-based solutions including the MyLugano app and its LVGA Points payment token, the Lugano digital franc and the 3Achain blockchain infrastructure. We strongly believe in this technology, the potential to scale the technology, – and our integrated collaboration with Tether – will build a better and more open, transparent and smart city."

"Lugano is a vibrant city, filled with innovators and future-forward thinkers," said Paolo Ardoino, CTO at Tether. "As the world’s largest stablecoin, we envision a future where businesses of all sizes and scale are able to leverage blockchain platforms to improve the quality of life of local citizens providing more sustainable, transparent, and reliable financial and day-to-day services. We look forward to Lugano becoming a model for global adoption."

This is the latest development of a process started by Lugano over one year ago with concrete actions aimed at positioning itself as the destination of choice in a rapidly growing sector. In addition to the already mentioned LVGA Points local payment system, Lugano developed a city blockchain, 3Achain, EVM compatible, which already counts about thirty partners across the most important public and private companies in Switzerland, as well as a number of blockchain related events open to the public in the fall of 2021.

Upcoming Events

The City also announced an October 2022 event, titled Bitcoin World Forum, which will promote deep conversation around freedom of communication and finance. This event will delve into topics such as disintermediation of finance, accessibility of financial services, unbanked persons, and regulation. Tether will support the conference by bringing the industry’s foremost thought leaders and creators from the world of digital finance together for collaboration and networking.

Additional details about the event and attendance will be available in the coming weeks.

About Tether

Created in October 2014, Tether was the first stablecoin in existence, and remained the sole stablecoin in the market until March 2018. Tether is disrupting the legacy financial system by offering a more modern approach to money. By adding fiat currency-digital cash to the bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains, Tether makes a significant contribution to a more connected ecosystem by introducing digital currency benefits, such as instant global transactions, to traditional currency and incorporating traditional currency benefits like price stability to digital currency. With a commitment to full transparency and compliance, Tether is the most secure, fastest, and cheapest way to transact with money.

About the City of Lugano

Lugano is the economic capital of Southern Switzerland, strategically located between the metropolitan areas of Milan and Zurich. Set in an exceptional natural context and landscape, Lugano is the ideal place for living and working.

The city hosts an important financial center and vibrant pharmaceutical, commodity trading and fashion hubs and remains a sought-after tourist destination.

A university town since 1996, Lugano is home to world class research institutes and infrastructure, including the Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence (IDSIA) and the Swiss National Supercomputing Center (CSCS).

Among the safest cities in the Country, Lugano offers business friendly legislation, great infrastructure and political stability typical of Switzerland, combined with a Mediterranean flair.

Media Contact for Tether: Carrie.Winans@fticonsulting.com

Media Contact for the City of Lugano: planb@lugano.ch

Today, Bitfinex and Tether submitted their response to CoinDesk in the legal proceedings concerning whether certain of the companies’ investment data, compliance procedures and other proprietary information is exempt from public disclosure under New York’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL).

CoinDesk’s reckless campaign to expose the companies’ proprietary business would needlessly risk harm to the companies’ competitive position and compliance controls. It would also upset the balance that the companies carefully negotiated in settling their disputes with the Office of the New York Attorney General (NYAG). The settlement specified what information should be disclosed publicly (such as a breakdown of Tether’s reserves by category) and what should be disclosed privately to NYAG (such as particular investment details). The private aspects are those that no business would publish for the competition to exploit.

One can only wonder what is motivating CoinDesk, which failed to mention in its papers a glaring conflict of interest—namely, that it is a subsidiary of an investor in Tether’s primary competitor.

Notwithstanding CoinDesk’s meritless arguments, Tether is proud of its industry-leading commitment to transparency, which goes above and beyond what was agreed just a year ago with NYAG. On a quarterly basis, Tether releases a Consolidated Reserves Report (CRR) with an accompanying Independent Accountant’s Report using assurance procedures. The CRR includes detailed ratings data about the assets backing USDT. Tether’s website is also updated on a daily basis with a summary of its assets and liabilities.

With Bitfinex’s and Tether’s latest filing, this matter is ready for a decision from the Court. Apart from the filings from the companies and from CoinDesk, the Court will also be considering a brief, earlier submission from NYAG which, in essence, urged the Court to review the documents in dispute and to make a decision based on that review. Notably, NYAG declined to offer any substantive argument for the dangerous position CoinDesk is now advancing.

Important interests are at stake in any forthcoming decision. Bitfinex and Tether have worked hard to advance their standing among the competition, and, in these proceedings and elsewhere, must protect those gains against the likes of CoinDesk or others seeking to tear down what the companies have proudly built. We look forward to the Court’s decision.

We’re pleased to announce the launch of Tether’s new website across both mobile and desktop devices.

With a refreshed look and modern design, will improve accessibility and streamlined site navigation will allow users to easily locate important information and key resources. Optimized for mobile, the new website will also make it easier than ever to learn about our Tether token (USDt, EURt XAUt & CNHt).

The new website charts the unparalleled and exponential growth of the world’s first and biggest stablecoin, providing detailed information about its benefits for individuals, merchants, and exchanges.

CoinDesk has sought to intervene in this proceeding in an effort to re-write the agreement between the New York Attorney General’s Office (OAG) and Tether and Bitfinex. We have made public the information required, and even gone above and beyond the agreement’s terms by providing quarterly assurance opinions from an independent accountant concerning Tether’s reserves and details on the ratings of its investments. Tether is proud to be an industry leader in transparency.

But the agreement with OAG did not call for proprietary details provided privately to OAG to be made public; no company in a competitive marketplace would have agreed to that. For that reason, OAG’s Records Access Officer initially agreed with Tether and Bitfinex that the information at issue in the proceedings should remain private. Yet, without any meaningful explanation, an OAG Appeals Officer came to the polar opposite conclusion.

It is worth noting that CoinDesk and Circle, the issuer of USDC and a Tether competitor, share an investor: Digital Currency Group. CoinDesk’s coverage of its legal papers does not alert readers to this glaring conflict of interest. Weaponizing the media does a disservice to the ecosystem. Tether welcomes healthy competition in the space but not when others do so without truth, honour, and respect.

Tether frequently collaborates with regulators and law enforcement to protect the cryptocurrency ecosystem, return property to injured parties, and further legitimate governmental objectives. We have been forthcoming with requests for transparency and documentation as to the composition of Tether’s reserves. Further disclosure of the information shared by Tether beyond the OAG will harm Tether’s competitive position in the marketplace and unnecessarily and unduly invade the privacy of third parties.

As a private company, Tether maintains certain proprietary details about its operations to protect its competitive advantage as a leader in the industry.

As we have said before, we look forward to a judicial determination of this matter by the New York Supreme Court.

We are unsure when the Financial Times became the Enquirer but we would like to believe that there are more important things to report on when it comes to the state of financial innovation than the personal lives of our company’s executives who are private citizens and principals at private companies. They are key members of the team working mostly behind the scenes to operate and grow the business. Like many other successful entrepreneurs who have come before them, they have led several smaller businesses before ultimately building companies in a brand new industry. They are now at the forefront of an ecosystem that many observers have described as the second coming of the internet.

The recent Financial Times story highlights the challenges of doing business in China, and despite this, JL was able to build positive relationships with his business constituents. This only further demonstrates the character and dedication of our company’s executives to problem solving and their ability to navigate through complex situations and environments.

As entrepreneurs who have ventured into different endeavors throughout the decades, it saddens them to see this genre of journalism taking over at the Financial Times. It is detrimental to the growth of a booming industry and serves as a distraction from the bigger problem that publications like the Financial Times are grappling with: how a legacy publication can best serve a readership that’s stuck in a prehistoric era.

Rather than taking the effort to truly learn and understand the significance of blockchain technology and the Web3 revolution, reporters such as the ones who penned this article for the Financial Times have chosen to go down the road of tabloid journalism to sustain readership for the once well-respected publication house.

Political and financial scenarios in regions across the globe have inspired populations to find more stable and secure currencies to hold, leading many to Tether. Pegged to the US dollar, Tether represents a safe and assured way to hold USD on the blockchain while also offering a reliable option for economies combatting inflation, anti-privacy laws, and more.

The National Unity Government of the Republic (NUG) is led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who has received commendations from the US. The party has also been acknowledged by the European Union. The fact that it has chosen to recognize USDT as an official currency is a commendation to the strength of the US dollar and its ability to provide a safe haven to citizens of the world. The significance of this moment goes far beyond the potentials of cryptocurrency to provide financial security but points to long-standing confidence in the US dollar for those who do not have confidence in their own governments or national currencies.

Last Friday another nonsense, copycat lawsuit was filed by two Plaintiffs and their law firm looking for a hefty payout based on entirely meritless claims. Their efforts will fail miserably. Shameless money grabs, for which this lawsuit is a textbook example, will never be dignified by way of paying one Satoshi in a settlement. Bitfinex and Tether will aggressively litigate and dispense with the action in due course, and then pursue their remedies against the filing parties.

As of October 2021, the global cryptocurrency market is worth more than $2.4 trillion USD equivalent, with just under half of that market share belonging to Bitcoin (BTC). The entire digital asset industry emerged from nothing in a little over a decade, and its meteoric rise to prominence has stunned even its most fervent supporters.

Today there are over 11,000 altcoins in existence, most of which differ greatly from Bitcoin. All of this variety and complexity can make this ecosystem extremely exciting, but also difficult to understand- at first!

One thing that can be important to understand is the difference between Bitcoin, Altcoins and Stablecoins. These represent three different types of digital assets, functionally speaking , although the term “cryptocurrencies” often refers to all of these types of digital assets.

Bitcoin On January 3rd, 2009, the first block of the Bitcoin blockchain was mined. This marked the official beginning of the world's first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, and the opening of a veritable pandora's box of innovation that would lead to the birth of an entirely new industry.

Only twelve years after its inception, BTC is a worldwide phenomenon. Its massive impact and influence on the evolution of digital assets has made it practically synonymous with the cryptocurrency movement itself.

Bitcoin initiated a revolutionary approach to money: it proposed a decentralized system, free of any top-down rulemakers, to address the shortcomings of centralized institutions.

Today, more and more people are recognizing Bitcoin as an important financial technology, to the point where it’s become a standard medium of exchange in certain economies and a widely used store of value in others. For example, El Salvador officially announced its plan to recognize BTC as legal tender on June 9th, 2021, and will likely be only the first of many countries to do so.

The Bitcoin network is made up of miners, nodes and users which are distributed all over the world.

On a structural level, Bitcoin's decentralized base layer makes it highly resistant to the control and influence of third parties. Bitcoin optimizes for security and decentralization as its core focus, while it achieves scalability via Layer 2’s, mainly the Lightning Network.

And while most Bitcoin developments currently focus on monetary applications, various Layer 2 projects seek to bring programmability to BTC via Rootstock and other smart contract platforms. This community-driven focus on innovation leads us to consider other altcoins whose objectives differ from Bitcoin’s.

Altcoins Two years after Bitcoin’s inception, Namecoin - the first Bitcoin fork (a copy of the Bitcoin blockchain) - was launched. Namecoin sought to improve upon the BTC system by making user domains less visible; however, it failed due to a slew of reasons, mostly related to poor leadership and difficulty of use.

While Namecoin is no longer actively used, it marked the beginning of a passionate wave of innovation that resulted in the creation of more Bitcoin forks (Litecoin and Privacy Coins) and later Ethereum, which became a driving innovator in the cryptocurrency industry.

What Do Altcoins Do? Currently, the majority of altcoins are focused on specific-use cases. These include decentralized computation platforms and financial products like exchanges, options protocols, and borrowing/lending platforms. Other types of altcoins can include privacy coins or governance tokens that allow users to make decisions for various protocols.

Whereas Bitcoin seeks to have a robust base layer which is only changed rarely, many other altcoins focus on rapid innovation! What all of these projects have in common is that they are seeking to accomplish their given goal in a decentralized manner, built on top of blockchain infrastructure.

With the exception of privacy coins, the vast majority of altcoins are built on top of Layer 1 computational platforms, such as Ethereum and other similar projects. These are programmable base layers that permit blockchain developers to deploy complex applications on top of the network

As an example, the Ethereum network has allowed users to develop applications that facilitate the ability of users to lend and borrow funds, issue security tokens, and earn income via various De-Fi (Decentralized Finance) protocols. These projects present a fundamentally new way to provide financial services, and as such have captured the imagination of many passionate investors and users.

However, due to this focus on driving innovation, such altcoins are often subject to drastic fluctuations in price, which makes them potentially less suitable for storing wealth or conducting transactions.

Stablecoins Stablecoins, on the other hand, are designed to be stable in value. The first and original stablecoin is the Tether token (USDt), which launched in July 2014.

A stablecoin is issued on a blockchain, with the goal of maintaining a stable value that can be used to trade, hedge and transact on various blockchain networks . The total supply of stablecoins currently exceeds $100 billion USD, with USDt representing over 70% of that total as of September 2021.

Tether tokens are designed so as to be redeemable by Tether, thanks to its reserves. On Tether.to, 1 USDt equals one dollar. Other stablecoins might be pegged to assets like gold, or various other fiat currencies including the Euro, Yuan, and others.

Defining Stability First off, it may come as a surprise that not every stablecoin is “stable.” Different networks utilize different approaches to maintaining a fixed value, and not all are successful.

There are two kinds of stablecoins: collateralized and uncollateralized. A collateralized stablecoin, such as the USDt, is backed by asset reserves. The value of reserves matches or exceeds the value of all Tether tokens in circulation. Reserves include traditional currency and cash equivalents and, from time to time, may include other assets and receivables from loans made by Tether to third parties.

Uncollateralized stablecoins use various algorithmic methods to maintain price stability. However, these coins have historically suffered much higher levels of volatility compared to USDt. As such, algorithmic stablecoins currently only represent a small fraction of the total supply of stablecoins in the market.

For seven years, USDt has always been redeemable for 1$ which has allowed it to maintain a constant value unlike most cryptocurrencies. Even at first glance, it's apparent that the goal of a stablecoin is very different from the goal of Bitcoin or those of various altcoins.

However, USDt owes much of its success to Bitcoin and the digital asset ecosystem! Each of these types of digital assets actually enhances the value and need for the others.

USDt’s success is in large part due to the global community of cryptocurrency users who wanted a stable digital store of value that is easily able to move between exchanges and could be used within financial applications.

The Future of Money Stablecoins represent a genuinely disruptive financial technology that challenges the incumbent payment industry. And as the creator of the first and largest stablecoin, Tether embraces a leading role driving forward financial innovation.

By the end of the decade, it's likely that millions of people will utilize stablecoins, especially in countries where blockchains are stronger guarantors of property rights than their own governments or banks.

As the world’s preeminent stablecoin, USDt holds the potential to radically alter the future of money for people around the world. USDt will empower them to store their wealth, make transactions, and transcend local limitations that could otherwise impair their financial freedoms.