stable coins

Story: Tether Launches USDT0 on Stellar, Unlocking $180 Billion in Liquidity

By Evie Vavasseur

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Why Stellar, Why Now. Stellar's whole pitch has shifted over the past couple of years.

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What This Means for Exchanges and Wallets. For exchanges and wallets building on Stellar, the appeal is pretty obvious.

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Stellar's Stablecoin Bet Gets Bigger. The network's Q1 2026 numbers were already strong before this. $5.

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Tether just plugged USDT into Stellar. The move gives Stellar users access to over $180 billion in USDT liquidity through a product called USDT0, built on LayerZero's OFT…

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That's a big number. And it lands on a network that's been quietly stacking stablecoin momentum for a while now. Stellar processed $5.

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USDT0 goes live on seven platforms out of the gate.

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Kraken, Freighter, Lobstr, Bitget, Fireblocks, Ramp Network, and SushiSwap are the first wave. More integrations are coming, though Tether hasn't said who's next or when exactly.

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Stellar's whole pitch has shifted over the past couple of years. Cross-border payments were always the core story, but the network has pushed hard into stablecoins, tokenized…

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Tether fits that direction pretty well. USDT is dominant in exactly the regions where Stellar has long had traction: Latin America, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific.

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That's the point of USDT0. It's not a new stablecoin. It's the same USDT liquidity, just made accessible on Stellar through LayerZero's OFT standard, which handles the…

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Read also: Thai Businessmen Challenge Tether Over $42.4M USDT Freeze Without Warrant

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For exchanges and wallets building on Stellar, the appeal is pretty obvious. Deeper liquidity means tighter spreads, more efficient transactions, and a stronger pitch to users…

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Fireblocks being in the first wave matters for the institutional side. Fireblocks is a custody and settlement infrastructure provider, not a retail wallet.

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Still, the integration is early. Seven platforms is a start, not a finished rollout. Stellar will probably need USDT0 showing up in a lot more wallets and applications before it…

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And there's a broader question about how USDT0 performs under actual cross-chain usage. LayerZero's OFT standard has been deployed across other networks, but Stellar's…

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