Tether’s USDT expands to TON, boosts P2P payments for 900 million Telegram users

Tether (USDT) is now live on The Open Network (TON) blockchain, the network powered by the cryptocurrency Toncoin (TON).

Telegram’s founder & CEO Pavel Durov, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino and The Open Platform CEO Andrew Rogozov announced the news at Token2049 Dubai on Friday, April 19.

USDT goes live on TON: What does this mean?

First, this is huge news for the burgeoning blockchain ecosystem, particularly the growing TON blockchain network that’s integrated with Telegram.

As announced today, USDT goes live on TON following Tether and TON Foundation’s partnership. The ultimate goal is to bring peer-to-peer payments to millions of users on Telegram.

Specifically, USDT live on the TON blockchain opens up cryptocurrency and Web3 to Telegram’s over 900 million monthly active Telegram. This massive group of users now have access to a borderless payments system, the TON Foundation announced.

Paolo Ardoino, CEO at Tether, said in a statement:

“The launch of USDt on TON will allow seamless value transfer globally in a simple experience that can match even the traditional financial system. This furthers our mission of powering open financial infrastructure across the blockchain space.”

According to the TON Foundation, the integration of TON, USDT and Telegram, could see millions of new cryptocurrency users onboarded to Web3.

USDT continues to dominate the stablecoin market, and currently has a total market cap of $109 billion. Per data from CoinGecko, Tether (USDT) has a 24-hour volume of over $75 billion.

TON Foundation unveils 11 million Toncoin (TON) promotion

As part of the launch, the TON Foundation has announced a mega 11 million Toncoin (TON) incentive program. The initiative will target early adopters of the USDT stablecoin within the TON ecosystem.

USDT users on the Telegram-integrated network will have a chance to earn a share of 5 million TON tokens when they buy or deposit USDT.  

Another 5 million TON tokens will be used to bolster Liquidity Pools across two of TON blockchain’s two largest decentralized finance (DEX) platforms – Ston.fi and DeDust. To qualify for the available yield, users will have to add both TON and USDT “in equal amounts.”

There’s also 1.2 million TON in free withdrawals at specified CEX platforms.

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