History of USDT

Welcome back crypto heads to another weekly edition of our strolls down memory lane. This week, we will be discussing one of the most used stablecoins around the world, USDT.

Let’s first start by dissecting the name itself. USD is the representation of the U.S dollar, and the T is the representation of the company’s name, Tether. In 2014, Brock Pierce, Craig Sellars, and Reeve Collins coined the idea of “Realcoin” with the aim of solving the issue of volatility in the market and simplify the exchange between Cryptocurrencies and FIAT currencies. “Realcoin” was then replaced with the name we all know today, USDT. Today, USDT has a ratio of 1 to 1 with the US dollar. Unfortunately, Tether has yet to publish certified proof that every unit of USDT is backed up by a single dollar.

In 2019, Tether released a statement highlighting the fact that it can no longer back up the amount of USDT in circulation with USD only. So, it resorted to assets and reserves to back the infamous stablecoin.

The all mighty stablecoin that everyone believed will maintain a value equal to that of the dollar saw a small slip in 2021. Where, the value fell from 1 USD to 0.98 USD. This small fall might seem minimalistic but, imagine $49,810,831,822 worth of USDT decreasing by 2%. To put it simply, around $996,216,636 worth of losses were incurred during that period.

This was a short trip down memory lane with everyone’s favorite stablecoin, USDT.

Thanks for tuning in, and see you next week for a spooky edition of our weekly updates.