Tether deploys USAT on Celo, adding a second mainnet after Ethereum

Launch adds native issuance and gas payments

Tether announced the deployment on Wednesday, months after Tether and Celo disclosed plans for the integration in March. USAT first launched on Ethereum, and Celo is now its second supported mainnet.

On Celo, USAT supports native mint-and-burn functions. That means issuance can happen directly on the network instead of relying on third-party bridges, which can add technical and custody risk. The token can also be used to pay transaction fees on Celo. That feature is enabled by the network’s CIP-64 upgrade, which allows approved ERC-20 tokens to be used as gas currencies rather than requiring a separate native token for fees.

Tether US chief executive Bo Hines said the decision to expand USAT to Celo was deliberate.

Celo’s existing Tether activity

According to the announcement, Celo has become Tether’s largest USDT distribution network by weekly active users since USDT launched on the blockchain in 2024. Tether also said Celo accounts for 28% of cross-blockchain USDT transfers.

The network also holds more than 90% of the market for XAUt0, the omnichain version of Tether Gold, according to the same announcement.

Tether’s transparency data shows about $470 million in authorized USDT on Celo, making it the eighth-largest blockchain supported by the stablecoin on that measure. Authorized supply does not necessarily equal circulating supply, because it can include inventory reserved for future issuance.

Separate market estimates cited in the report put Celo’s circulating stablecoin supply at about $136 million. Of that, USDT accounts for roughly $78.8 million, implying a 57.6% share.

USAT’s role in Tether’s US payments push

USAT launched in January and has reached a market capitalization of around $185 million. That is still far smaller than USDT’s roughly $180 billion supply, though the two tokens are aimed at different use cases.

Anchorage Digital Bank issues USAT. The bank is federally chartered and supervised by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, according to the report. Hines joined Tether US after serving as executive director of the President’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets from January through August 2025.

The article said this structure places USAT at the center of Tether’s effort to expand beyond crypto trading and into day-to-day dollar payments in the United States.

Broader expansion plans

Earlier in July, crypto.news reported that Tether led Pact Labs’ $7 million Series A round alongside Blockchange Ventures and Lasagna. The funding is intended to help integrate USAT into payroll and payment systems used by US employers.

Pact Labs plans to offer businesses blockchain-based wage processing while adding embedded digital wallets and related financial services. The effort targets a US payroll market that processes more than $11 trillion each year, according to the report.

Celo may serve as another settlement network for those applications because of its low fees, mobile-first design and existing stablecoin usage. The blockchain launched as a Layer 1 in 2020 and transitioned to an Ethereum Layer 2 built on the OP Stack in March 2025. Separately, Opera has launched a self-custodial stablecoin wallet on Celo with Tether’s support, a product that has reportedly reached more than 18 million users worldwide.