Coinbase Pro Lists Controversial Crypto Stablecoin Tether: What You Need To Know

Coinbase Pro Lists Controversial Crypto Stablecoin Tether: What You Need To Know

Coinbase Pro, the crypto exchange owned by the newly public Coinbase Global Inc (NASDAQ: COIN), has announced that it will list crypto stablecoin Tether (USDT).

What Happened: USDT has its value pegged to the value of the U.S dollar and is the largest stablecoin by market cap.

Although it operates on a number of blockchains, Coinbase Pro says it will only support the ERC-20 USDT running on the Ethereum blockchain.

Trading is set to begin “on or after 6 PM Pacific Time on Monday, April 26,” subject to the liquidity conditions being met.

Why It Matters: With over $49 billion in market cap, USDT forms the backbone of the majority of crypto trading as it is the most common trading pair on several exchanges. Despite its status as the number one stablecoin, USDT has been the subject of controversy for a number of years.

Tether Limited, the company behind USDT, was the subject of a New York Attorney General (NYAG) inquiry in 2019.

NYAG Letitia James obtained a court order against Tether and affiliated crypto exchange Bitfinex for the alleged cover-up of an $850 million loss.

Tether was also under scrutiny regarding whether USDT was actually backed one-for-one by the U.S dollar.

Earlier this year, the inquiry ended in an $18.5 million settlement with Tether admitting no wrongdoing and agreeing to provide quarterly reports on its reserves.

See also: How to Buy Tether (USDT)

Coinbase’s decision to list the stablecoin may serve to dispel any Tether FUD that still remains in the market, as well as provide more arbitrage opportunities to traders.

Price Action: Tether (USDT) was trading at $0.99 at press time. The trading volume increased by more than 45% after the announcement.

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Coinbase Pro Announces Listing of Stablecoin Tether (USDT)

Coinbase, the US-based cryptocurrency exchange, announced support for stablecoin Tether (USDT) and mentioned that the trading of USDT will start on Coinbase Pro from Monday 26 April. Trading will be available in the company’s supported jurisdictions.

According to the official announcement, Coinbase is only supporting ERC-20 USDT running on the Ethereum blockchain. Coinbase Pro users are now allowed to transfer Tether (USDT) into their accounts ahead of the trading.

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Tether is the most valuable stablecoin in the world. The cryptocurrency currently has a market cap of approximately $50 billion. USDT is the 4th most valuable digital currency in the world. The total market cap of Tether has surged significantly since the start of this year.

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“Starting immediately, we will begin accepting inbound transfers of Tether (USDT) to Coinbase Pro. Trading will begin on or after 6 PM Pacific Time (PT) Monday, April 26, if liquidity conditions are met. Please note that Coinbase only supports ERC-20 USDT. Once sufficient supply of USDT is established on the platform, trading on our BTC-USDT, ETH-USDT, USDT-EUR, USDT-GBP, USDT-USD and USDT-USDC order books will launch in three phases, post-only, limit-only and full trading,” Coinbase mentioned in the official announcement.

Coinbase Listing

The American cryptocurrency exchange is one of the largest digital exchanges in the world. Coinbase recently went public through a direct listing on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol of COIN. The shares of the company jumped nearly 30% on its debut but saw a correction in the following days. According to the closing price of Thursday, COIN shares dropped below $300. The cryptocurrency exchange reported a significant jump in trading volumes during Q1 of 2021. The company also reported total revenues of approximately $1.8 billion during the first three months of 2021.

The recent Tether support from Coinbase came after the company expanded its product offering with the addition of several digital currencies, including Ampleforth Governance Token (FORTH), Enjin Coin (ENJ), NKN (NKN), Origin Token (OGN), Ankr (ANKR) Curve DAO Token (CRV), Storj (STORJ) and Cardano (ADA).

Tether Market Cap Swells Past $50 Billion, USDT Stablecoin Gets Listed on Coinbase Pro – Bitcoin News

Tether Market Cap Swells Past $50 Billion, USDT Stablecoin Gets Listed on Coinbase Pro

The blockchain stablecoin issuer Tether Operations Limited has recently surpassed a $50 billion market valuation after seeing exponential growth during the last few years. Furthermore, the stablecoin tether has launched on the trading platform Coinbase Pro this week marking the San Francisco-based exchange’s first time supporting the dollar-pegged token.

Tether Market Cap Increases by 170% in 6 Months

The blockchain company has reached a milestone this week as the firm’s dollar-pegged token USDT has surpassed a $50 billion market capitalization. Back in November 2020, Bitcoin.com News reported on how USDT towered over the stablecoin competition, as the market cap grew by 2 million percent in four years. At that time, records had shown tether’s (USDT) market valuation was around $18.5 billion. At $50 billion today, the USDT market valuation increased by 170.27% since November.

Tether Operations Limited says that the skyrocketing market cap stems from a myriad of use cases including spot exchanges leveraging tether and decentralized finance (defi) applications using the stablecoin. Data from Messari.io shows that reported daily volume for tether is around $117 billion and usually reported daily USDT volume is over the $100 billion mark every day. 24 hour “Real Volume” stats from Messari.io indicate that USDT volume could really be around $38.80 billion on April 26. This is still the largest crypto in terms of traded volume on a daily basis, in comparison to top crypto assets like ETH and BTC.

“Crossing a market cap of US$50 billion represents an incredibly important milestone for Tether,” Paolo Ardoino, the CTO at Tether explained after reaching the $50 billion market cap milestone. “When the group of visionaries that created Tether in 2014 first launched the stablecoin they could not have dreamt that it would have grown so exponentially. Tether’s success is a blueprint for a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and a banking system of the future. We are truly humbled by the pivotal role that Tether now plays in the digital token ecosystem across myriad protocols and applications.”

Coinbase Pro Starts to List Tether Trading Pairs in Phases, Stablecoin Is Not Supported on Coinbase.com Yet

When tether (USDT) first came out, the stablecoin was issued via the Bitcoin (BTC) network by using the Omni Layer Protocol. Since then, the token has branched off into multiple blockchains and USDT has been issued on blockchain networks like Ethereum, Solana, Tron, Bitcoin Cash, EOS, Liquid, and Algorand. Moreover, tether’s ERC20 version is leveraged on various defi applications and decentralized exchange (dex) platforms. USDT is used on a myriad of centralized spot exchanges all across the globe and just recently the token was added to Coinbase Pro.

“Starting immediately,” Coinbase said. “We will begin accepting inbound transfers of USDT to Coinbase Pro. Trading will begin on or after 6 p.m. Pacific Time (PT) Monday, April 26, if liquidity conditions are met. Please note that Coinbase only supports ERC20 USDT.”

If everything works out and a sufficient supply of USDT is established on the Coinbase platform, the exchange will offer tether pairs in BTC, ETH, EUR, GBP, USD, and USDC. But if there is not enough liquidity for one pair, the pairing may get removed. Coinbase says that it will announce each tether pair listing in phases and USDT will not be available yet on Coinbase.com.

“We will make a separate announcement if and when this support is added,” the San Francisco exchange’s announcement concludes.

What do you think about tether’s market cap mushrooming to a whopping $50 billion this week? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, Tether logo,

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