Tether invests $100M in agriculture firm as stablecoin competition grows
Tether’s first investment in the agriculture and food follows previous investments in artificial intelligence, Bitcoin mining operations, and digital education efforts.
Tether, the company behind the world’s largest stablecoin, has invested $100 million to acquire a 9.8% interest in Latin American agricultural behemoth Adecoagro. This is Tether’s first investment in the agriculture and food industry.
According to a business filing, Tether previously invested in developing technologies, including artificial intelligence, peer-to-peer platforms, Bitcoin mining operations, and digital education projects.
Tether used working capital funds for the investment
Tether stated that it “used cash from its own working capital” for the Adecoagro transaction. Tether presently owns 10,048,249 shares of Adecoagro, accounting for 9.8% of the “outstanding common shares”.
Adecoagro, founded in 2002, is a big milk manufacturer in Argentina, processing 550 thousand liters per day at its Buenos Aires factory, according to its website. In 2005, the company entered the sugar, ethanol, and energy market in Brazil.
USDT sees increasing competition in the stablecoin market
Tether’s USDT $1.00 is the largest stablecoin, with a market capitalization of more than $118 billion, according to CoinMarketCap. Tether recently revealed plans to launch a new stablecoin based on the United Arab Emirates dirham (AED).
Phoenix Group and Green Acorn Investments, both based in the UAE, will collaborate to develop the new stablecoin. This project seeks to develop a digital version of the dirham currency that is “fully backed by liquid UAE-based reserves.”
However, competition in the stablecoin market has increased with the entry of new competitors, such as PayPal’s US dollar-pegged stablecoin, PayPal USD, which has already topped $1 billion in total market capitalisation.
Ripple Labs has also launched the first tests of its US dollar-pegged stablecoin, Ripple Labs’ Ripple USD (RLUSD), on the XRP and Ethereum mainnets. It intends to deploy the fiat-backed coin on additional blockchain networks in the future. On August 26, the market capitalisation of stablecoins, excluding algorithmic ones, reached a record $168 billion. The market reached a record high of $167 billion in March 2022, but declined to $135 billion by the end of the year.
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