Key facts: USDT dominates 70% of the stablecoin market and exceeds 100 billion capitalization. Celo uses thin clients, ideal for running on low-performance devices. The company that issues the most used stablecoin in the world, Tether, revealed the expansion of USDT to the Celo network, focused on fast and low-cost payments in mobile applications. Tether, the leader with 70% of the stablecoin market, takes advantage of Celo's compatibility with Ethereum to expand its accessibility to various types of devices around the world.
Celo is a network known for the use of an infrastructure designed for low-resource devices., such as mobile phones. Its main objective is to provide a platform suitable for the execution of decentralized applications (dApps) and fast payments, with commissions close to USD 0.005 at the time of writing this note, according to the project's official website. With the arrival to Celo, USDT can be used natively on the network to make transfers and to pay for gas in dApps, although the latter depends on the approval of the proposal that cLabs will present in this regard. Tether's statement details the applicability of USDT in projects such as Opera MiniPay in the Celo ecosystem, with its ultralight wallet in countries such as Kenya and Ghana. For users, the main benefits have to do with the possibility of operating with very low costs in an application ecosystem compatible with Ethereum. The statement also clarifies that Celo's carbon-negative network «will not only ensure the accessibility of USDT via mobile devices, but will also maintain the financial transparency and low costs» that Tether pursues.
Tether and the Celo ecosystem usher in a new era of accessibility and utility for digital currency users, marking a significant milestone for both platforms (…). “Celo’s mobile focus and extensive ecosystem, spanning over 1,000 projects in over 150 countries, align perfectly with Tether’s goal of accessibility.” Tether statement on the launch of USDT on Celo.
USDT joins the Celo ecosystem
According to data from Defillama, There are 48 decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols on Celo. Together, they accumulate a total value locked (TVL) of USD 266 million. The Mento protocol, which allows the issuance of algorithmic stablecoins (such as Celo USD, cUSD) and the decentralized exchanges (Dexes) Uniswap and Curve are among the most prominent. In this sense, the companies expressed that «USDT will join a variety of stable assets on Celo, including solutions such as Mento's eXOF and cREAL, which follow the CFA Franc (used in 14 countries in sub-Saharan Africa) and the Brazilian Real, respectively». “This integration expands the use cases for stable assets on Celo, including, but not limited to, remittances, savings, loans, peer-to-peer (P2P) payments, and cross-border transactions,” the text continues. For its part, USDT is widely the leading stablecoin on the market, with 70% dominance and a capitalization of USD 102,167 million. If all cryptocurrencies on the market are considered, it is only surpassed by bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) in capitalization. As mentioned before in BitcoinDynamic, USDT is now available in 16 networks. These include the main ones in the DeFi ecosystem, such as Algorand, Avalanche, Ethereum, EOS, Liquid Network, Near, Omni, Polygon, Solana, Bitcoin Cash's Standard Ledger Protocol, Statemine, Statemint, Tezos, and Tron.