The world's biggest stablecoin has launched on the Bitcoin Cash network.
Tether (USDT) has seen a surge of interest in recent weeks due to the global flight to safe havens and now has a market cap greater than $5.7 billion. More than $180 million was minted in recent days, preceding Bitcoin’s remarkable price spike in the past 24 hours.
USDT will now be available on the Bitcoin Cash network. It is also available on Ethereum, Algorand, EOS, Liquid Network, Omni and Tron.
Bitcoin Cash has its own generic token called the Simple Ledger Protocol, which is BCH’s version of the ERC-20 token on Ethereum that fuelled the ICO boom.
About 3.64 Billion USDT is on Ethereum
While Tether began life on the Omni layer protocol, the majority of USDT has shifted to Ethereum which last year saw the network verging dangerously close to capacity. The trend has accelerated in recent weeks as the supply increased.
The Bitcoin Cash network has larger blocks and lower fees than Bitcoin itself. If a significant proportion of Tether moves to the Bitcoin Cash network, that may help reduce demand on the Ethereum network and gas fees.
Paolo Ardoino, CTO at Tether said:
“A key strength of Tether is that it is underpinned by a rich diversity of different blockchains. Our latest collaboration with Bitcoin Cash will provide Tether with a variety of benefits. We expect the adoption after launch to be pretty easy for any integrator. The launch will also support more applications on the Bitcoin Cash chain, with Tether facilitating payment for these applications.”
Bitcoin Cash’s Bitcoin.com wallet was recently upgraded to enable its 10 million users to access SLP tokens via the app, which will now provide them access to USDT as well.
Roger Ver, Executive Chair of Bitcoin.com said:
"It's extremely exciting to hear that the world's biggest stablecoin will be using the Bitcoin Cash Blockchain and that the millions of Bitcoin.com wallet holders will be able to send and receive Tether using SLP tokens."