Tether's USAT stablecoin goes live on Celo

USAT, the Tether-branded dollar stablecoin issued by Anchorage Digital Bank, went live on Celo, its first deployment on a chain other than Ethereum. The token supports native minting and burning there rather than arriving as a bridged representation.

Celo's CIP-64 fee abstraction lets holders pay gas in USAT directly, removing the requirement to hold a separate native token in order to move the stablecoin. Valora already supports USAT on Celo; Opera's MiniPay, which reports more than 18 million users, has not yet added it.

USAT's market capitalisation stands at roughly $185 million against USDT's $180 billion. Celo carries about 28 percent of USDT transfers across chains, which is the stated reason for choosing it as the second deployment.

Paying fees in the asset being moved removes the step where a payments user must acquire a second token before spending the first, which is the friction that has kept stablecoin transfers off consumer rails.