Tether’s stablecoin to be integrated into Bitcoin Lightning
Tether’s USDT stablecoin is being integrated with Lightning Labs’ Taproot Assets protocol by Lightning Labs, the company behind Bitcoin layer 2 Lightning Network.
As part of the Lightning Network layer 2 scaling service, Tether said it will bring its stablecoin to Bitcoin.
The partnership was announced Jan. 30 at Plan B, a Bitcoin-focused conference in San Salvador, El Salvador, by Lightning Labs CEO Elizabeth Stark.
According to Tether, Lightning Labs, the company behind the Lightning Network, built the solution by leveraging the Taproot Assets protocol, which expanded the Bitcoin network’s functionality to support tokenized assets in 2022.
The market cap of Tether USDT $0.9999 is $139.4 billion, almost three times higher than Circle’s USDC $1.00 at $53.1 billion.
Tether processed $10 trillion in transactions in 2024, closing in on payment behemoth Visa’s $16 trillion, and maintains the token on over ten blockchains, including Ethereum, Tron, Solana, and Avalanche. Lightning Labs’ Stark and business development director Ryan Gentry stated in a blog post that the connection will enable merchants to accept Bitcoin. Over Lightning, add USDT as a payment option utilising the same infrastructure.”Millions of people will now be able to use the most open, secure blockchain to send dollars globally,” according to Stark. “This integration also brings Bitcoin to the many users in emerging markets who rely on stablecoins regularly as a hedge against the devaluation of their local currencies and savings.”
Lightning Labs stated that the integration might facilitate the upcoming “wave” of transactions between artificial intelligence agents and autonomous cars, in addition to supporting USDT micropayments on Lightning.
Tether relocated earlier this month to El Salvador, the only country where Bitcoin is now legal tender. El Salvador launched a Bitcoin Lightning Network-supported Chivo Wallet for its residents in September 2021, but it hasn’t been particularly successful.
Merchants were also required to accept Bitcoin as a payment option until recently, when El Salvador agreed to make the payments voluntary as part of a $1.4 billion loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund.
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