Tether terminates Bitcoin support while advertising Bitcoin support
This morning, $162 billion stablecoin giant Tether proudly announced that its team is excited to “bring USDT home to Bitcoin” via two new protocols.
Missing from that announcement is the reality that Tether is actually terminating support for most USDT-on-Bitcoin tokens on September 1.
As part of a “strategic infrastructure review,” Tether admitted on July 11 that it would be terminating support on September 1, 2025 for its largest version of USDT on Bitcoin’s blockchain, the Omni layer.
After Monday, the only USDT-on-Bitcoin tokens left will be less than $50 million on Blockstream’s Liquid, a functionary-controlled sidechain.
Incredibly, Tether was honest in July, explaining that Bitcoin’s Omni layer wasn’t “high-utility, actively developed” infrastructure “aligned with community usage trends” as much as other blockchains that the company decided to continue supporting.
So, effective September 1, redemptions of USDT-on-Bitcoin Omni will cease and tokens will be manually frozen by the company.
That will end over a decade of Tether’s support for the Omni layer since at least October 2014.
Killing USDT-on-Bitcoin while ‘exploring’ Lightning
This morning, the company didn’t repeat that reality while marketing preliminary plans to “bring USDT home to Bitcoin” via two Bitcoin Lightning Network protocols, Taproot Assets and RGB.
Tether launched its first version of USDT on Bitcoin technology linked to Mastercoin, a 2013 initial coin offering. Over the years, Tether has added fiat redemption and freeze support for a variety of blockchains.
Today, it supports fiat redemption on Tron, Ethereum, Solana, Aptos, Ton, Avalanche, Celo, Cosmos, Omni, Kaia, Near, Liquid, Tezos, Polkadot Asset Hub, EOS, SLP, Algorand, and Kusama Asset Hub.
On Monday, Tether plans to discontinue support for Bitcoin Omni, EOS, Algorand, SLP, and Kusama. Not yet live, it’s announced an exploration of possible support for Bitcoin layer 2 protocols.
Read more: Howard Lutnick wants Tether to get an audit
The simultaneous announcement about adding Bitcoin support while removing Bitcoin support isn’t the only example of Tether doublespeak.
Its chief financial officer signed a settlement and agreed to never deny that from June 1, 2017 until September 15, 2017, USDT tokens were not backed “1-to-1” by USD held by Tether in a bank account. This is despite contrary claims at that time.
Tether has also paid the Commodity Futures Trading Commission $41 million over claims that it inconsistently backed its USDT.
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