Tether's US-focused USAT stablecoin has officially launched on Celo mainnet, marking its second mainnet deployment after Ethereum and extending the token to a network widely used for digital-dollar payments. According to The Block, the token is issued by Anchorage Digital Bank and can be natively minted and redeemed on Celo. USAT holders will be able to use native mint-and-burn functions on Celo, reducing the need to move tokens through third-party bridges which can introduce additional technical and custody risks. The token can also be used to pay transaction fees on the network through Celo's fee abstraction mechanism, which allows approved ERC-20 tokens to serve as gas currencies instead of requiring users to hold a separate network token. As reported by Tether, USAT can now be used to pay gas fees on Celo thanks to the platform's gas abstraction feature introduced in the CIP-64 upgrade, allowing ERC-20 tokens to serve as gas currencies.
Celo has become Tether's largest USDT distribution network by weekly active users since the flagship stablecoin launched on the blockchain in 2024, as reported by crypto.news. The network accounts for 28% of cross-blockchain USDT transfers and holds more than 90% of the market for XAUt0, the omnichain version of Tether Gold. Tether's transparency data lists about $470 million in authorized USDT on Celo, making it the token's eighth-largest supported blockchain by that measure. Separate market estimates place Celo's total circulating stablecoin supply near $136 million, with USDT accounting for about $78.8 million, giving Tether a 57.6% share of that market. According to CoinPedia, Celo recorded 67% user growth in the second quarter of 2026, with hundreds of thousands of users transacting on the network daily. Celo, founded in 2017, transitioned to an Ethereum Layer 2 in March 2025 for enhanced security and scalability.
USAT launched in January and has grown to a market capitalization of approximately $185 million, according to The Block reports. That remains a small fraction of USDT's roughly $180 billion supply, but the two tokens serve different markets. Tether designed USAT around the requirements of the US GENIUS Act, with the stablecoin maintaining reserves in cash or liquid cash equivalents, including US Treasury securities, to support one-to-one redemptions. Anchorage Digital Bank, a federally chartered crypto bank supervised by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, issues the token. Despite the expansion, USAT remains a small player compared with Tether's flagship USDT, but the Celo launch could help close that gap by placing USAT on a network where stablecoin use is already strong.
Tether is gaining access to another major part of Celo's stablecoin ecosystem through MiniPay, a stablecoin wallet developed by Opera, as reported by CoinPedia. MiniPay has more than 18 million global users and is expected to add USAT support soon, which could give USAT much wider reach for users who rely on stablecoins for payments, savings and remittances rather than simply trading crypto. Celo co-founder Marek Olszewski stated that bringing USAT to the network would help make regulated digital-dollar infrastructure more accessible for users. The network demonstrates strong stablecoin adoption, with more than 50% of gas payments on Celo already made using stablecoins, showing how deeply dollar-pegged tokens have entered its payment system.
As reported by crypto.news, Tether led Pact Labs' $7 million Series A funding round alongside Blockchange Ventures and Lasagna in mid-July. The deal aims to integrate USAT into payroll and payment systems used by American employers, targeting a US payroll market that processes more than $11 trillion annually. Pact Labs plans to let businesses process wages through blockchain payment rails while adding embedded digital wallets and related financial services. Tether US CEO Bo Hines stated that expanding USAT to Celo was a deliberate decision, noting that Celo has built an environment where digital dollars are already being used at scale with hundreds of thousands of people transacting on the network every day.
