09-24-2025 
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Tether is reportedly looking to raise billions of dollars as a growing number of nations are looking to launch stablecoins based on their local currencies, not U.S. dollars.
- Tether raising $20B, possibly to pay its electrical bills
- PYUSD, RLUSD, USDC making moves
- Société Générale launches USD stablecoin
- China, Kazakhstan, South Korea go for local currency stables
- Corporate/financial institution stablecoin survey
On September 23, Bloomberg reported that Tether was talking with investors about the possibility of raising between $15-$20 billion in a private placement. Bloomberg’s sources claim Tether is looking to offer up to 3% of itself to investors, and while the final amount raised could be much lower, the upper end of that raise would value the company at ~$500 billion.
The raise would reportedly involve new equity, rather than existing investors selling any of their shares. Wall Street financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald (NASDAQ: ZCFITX), which allegedly custodies the U.S. Treasury bills backing the $172.7 billion in issued USDT and most definitely “owns a convertible bond with Tether,” will reportedly advise Tether on the transaction.
Potential investors have reportedly been granted access to “a data room” to allow them to kick Tether’s financial tires beyond the limited/unaudited information they provide to the public. Assuming investors like what they see, the deal could close by year’s end.
Tether’s U.S. point man, Bo Hines, initially denied that the company was looking to raise cash, but CEO Paolo Ardoino later tweeted that Tether is “evaluating a raise from a selected group of high-profile key investors, to maximize the scale of the Company’s strategy across all existing and new business lines (stablecoins, distribution ubiquity, AI, commodity trading, energy, communications, media) by several orders of magnitude.”
Frankly, Hines’ initial claim seemed more logical, considering Tether’s claims of reaping billions of dollars in profits every 90 days and being the most profitable-per-employee business in the world.
And yet, Uruguayan media reported last week that Microfin, Tether’s local block reward mining offshoot, stopped paying its electrical bills in May. When the unpaid tab reached $4.8 million in July, the state-owned utility UTE cut off Microfin’s power.
Tether was said to be trying to negotiate a better rate from UTE and appeared to be using a possible expansion of mining operations in neighboring Brazil as leverage in these negotiations. But Telemundo subsequently reported that Tether had decided to exit Uruguay due to the high local costs of electricity.
A Tether spokesperson told Cointelegraph that reports of the company fleeing Uruguay “do not accurately reflect the situation.” Tether claimed to be having “ongoing discussions with the government to resolve the outstanding friction” as the company continues to “evaluate the best way forward in Uruguay and the region more broadly.”
Tether has actively promoted its mining operations in Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina, with Ardoino claiming in May that the company has “invested $2 billion in energy production and Bitcoin mining.” Ardoino boldly predicted that Tether could become “the biggest Bitcoin miner in the world” by year’s end.
It seems odd that a company with multi-billions in quarterly profits and a goal of becoming the world’s dominant mining outfit would quibble over a few million dollars, particularly if that meant taking a chunk of its mining hash power offline for months at a time. Hopefully, that $20 billion raise will help avoid future hard choices like this.
While USDT is the unquestioned market cap leader, there’s a real battle royal going on among all the other U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoins as they look to stake out financial real estate and market share.
Stablecoin adoption by corporations and financial institutions is expected to soar once the Treasury Department finishes its rules on how to implement the stablecoin-focused GENIUS Act that President Donald Trump signed into law this summer, and stablecoin issuers are looking to get their ducks in a row ahead of time.
Take PYUSD (market cap: $1.4 billion), the stablecoin issued by payment processor PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL). On September 22, Stable, the layer-1 ‘stablechain’ network backed by the Bitfinex digital asset exchange, announced that PayPal’s venture capital arm PayPal Ventures had made “a strategic investment” in Stable to advance the latter’s “role in stablecoin payments.” Stable noted that “as part of this investment, PYUSD will be available on the Stablechain.”
Stable launched with the primary goal of increasing the reach of USDT (Tether is Bitfinex’s sister company) and uses a version of USDT called USDT0 based on LayerZero’s Omnichain Fungible Token (OFT) standard.
LayerZero has now enabled a new version of PYUSD called PYUSD0 that will expand PYUSD’s reach beyond its original deployment on the Ethereum, Solana, Arbitrum, and Stellar networks. Besides Stable, PYUSD0 will now be available on six additional networks—Abstract, Aptos, Avalanche, Ink, Sei, and Tron—while permissionless versions on Berachain and Flow will upgrade to PYUSD0. LayerZero is promising that more networks will join the PYUSD0 party soon.
Not to be outdone, Ripple Labs, issuer of the RLUSD stablecoin (market cap: $740 million), has teamed up with tokenization platform Securitize to enable RLUSD smart contract functionality for the tokenized funds BUIDL, which is managed by BlackRock (NASDAQ: BLK), and VBILL, which is managed by Van Eck.
The tie-up means BUIDL and VBILL holders can “instantly exchange their shares for RLUSD 24/7, unlocking additional stable, on-chain transfers.” Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo said his company and Ripple are “delivering real-time settlement and programmable liquidity across a new class of compliant, on-chain investment products.”
Circle (NASDAQ: CRCL), issuer of the USDC stablecoin (market cap: $74.2 billion), announced last week that a native version of USDC was now live on the HyperLiquid decentralized exchange. The move is a day late and a buck short, considering that HyperLiquid users voted to elect Native Markets as the issuer of its new native USDH stablecoin shortly before Circle’s announcement.
Circle didn’t participate in the USDH issuer ‘auction’ that was won on September 14 by Native Markets, a new entity led by HyperLiquid investor Max Fiege, who partnered with payment processor Stripe and its stablecoin integration platform Bridge on the bid.
Circle’s disinterest in the auction surprised some onlookers, given that the amount of USDC currently on HyperLiquid represents 7-8% of USDC’s market cap, and the threat that losing this revenue poses to Circle should USDH adoption surge.
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire dismissed the threat in an interview with The Rollup podcast, saying Circle’s focus on ensuring USDC works on as many networks as possible would serve it well going forward. But with Circle’s revenue almost entirely dependent on interest on the T-bills backing issued USDC—and the Trump administration continuing to pressure the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates—push could come to shove sooner than later.Société Générale says U-S-A!
USDH is by far from the only new dollar-denominated stable on the block. Tether recently teased the upcoming launch of USAT, its new GENIUS-compliant stablecoin aimed at the U.S. market, while the MetaMask digital wallet’s new mUSD stablecoin went live earlier this month.
This trio will join an already crowded market of lower-tier stables (USDe, USDS, USDF, USD1, USDG, etc.) that will grow even more crowded as the aforementioned corporations and institutions throw their hats into this ring.
Dollar-denominated tokens virtually own the stablecoin market cap, a dominance that other nations have viewed with varying degrees of alarm. The European Central Bank (ECB) has warned that fiscal sovereignty could be at risk should European Union residents choose to transact online in tokens based on the dollar rather than the euro.
As such, it must stick in the ECB’s craw that Société Générale-FORGE, the digital asset subsidiary of French bankers Société Générale (NASDAQ: SCGLY), has just released USD CoinVertible (USDCV), its new dollar-denominated stablecoin. The company previously released a euro-denominated stable (EURCV) in April 2023 (market cap: $49.5 million).
USDCV, which is compliant with the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), will make its public debut on Bullish Europe, the German-regulated division of the Bullish Global (NASDAQ: BLSH) exchange. Bank of New York (BNY) Mellon is serving as USDCV’s custodian.
Kazakhstan, China, South Korea say down with the dollar!
Other nations appear to share the ECB’s sovereignty concerns. Just weeks after Kazakhstan’s Astana Financial Services Authority (AFSA) announced plans for a USD-denominated stablecoin payments program via the Bybit exchange, Interfax quoted National Bank of Kazakhstan CEO Timur Suleimenov announcing “the first Kazakh stablecoin denominated in our national currency.”
The Tenge-denominated stablecoin, which will be called ‘Evo’ (short for ‘evolution,’ apparently) and carry the ticker KTZE, was launched on the Solana network as part of the Bank’s digital asset regulatory sandbox. KTZE will make its debut on local exchange Intebix, thanks to a collaboration with Mastercard (NASDAQ: MA) and Kazakhstan’s Eurasian Bank.
Suleimenov said KTZE “promotes the localization of liquidity within the country, integration with the existing financial infrastructure, and the development of the domestic digital asset ecosystem.”
Speaking of the AFSA, its first stablecoin license recipient AnchorX made headlines last week via the launch of the first stablecoin based on China’s offshore yuan (CNH). The Hong Kong-based AnchorX says AxCNH, which is built on the Conflux network, has secured a listing agreement with Kazakh exchange ATAIX Eurasia.
The plan is for AxCNH to facilitate easier cross-border payments for Chinese entities operating in countries participating in China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI). BRI nations accounted for just over half of China’s total trading volume in 2024.
News of the offshore yuan stable first circulated in July, but the Shanghai state-run media outlet that first reported on the project scrubbed the report just a few weeks later, apparently due to Beijing’s concerns that scammers were already exploiting the announcement to fleece local crypto enthusiasts.
Finally, last week brought word of the imminent launch of South Korea’s first KRW-denominated stablecoin. KRW1 is the product of local digital asset custodian BDACS, which will store the won currency backing KRW1 at Woori Bank, one of the country’s four largest domestic banks.
KRW1 only recently cleared its proof-of-concept stage, as South Korea is still working on stablecoin regulations. BDACS envisions the token eventually being used for remittances, payments, investments and deposits, as well as public-sector applications like emergency relief disbursements.
KRW1 will debut on the Avalanche network, as the company is one of BDACS’ core global partners, but BDACS expects to expand to other networks in due course.
EY stablecoin survey
In case anyone was still wondering what all the stablecoin fuss is about, check out this new EY-Parthenon survey of C-suite ‘decision-makers’ at corporations and financial institutions in both the U.S. and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) markets. The survey was conducted this summer as the GENIUS Act was nearing the end of its journey to Trump’s desk.
Nearly one-quarter (23%) of financial institutions and 8% of corporations are already using stablecoins to some degree, for an overall total of 13%. Of those not yet using stablecoins, 54% expect to do so within the next 6-12 months.
Of those already using stablecoins, 24% expect their interest will significantly increase, and another 69% expect a moderate increase. Of those not yet onboard, only 1% expect a significant increase, while 59% expect a moderate increase.
Interestingly, the prospect of “clear and supportive stablecoin legislation in your primary operating region” would result in 65% of respondents slightly increasing their interest, 16% significantly increasing interest, while 19% said it would have no impact.
The top concern of organizations was regulatory uncertainty at 73%, with even higher figures cited by those in Asia (81%) and Europe (79%). Accounting and tax treatment clarity was a distant second at 38%, but that figure was 50% in the U.S., much higher than in Asia (22%) or Europe (11%).
Operational complexity (32%) ranked third on the concern chart, followed by limited banking partner support (29%), not enough adoption from other parties (27%), volatility or de-pegging concerns (26%), counterparty risk of issuer or other third parties (23%), internal compliance hurdles (21%), security of custody/wallet solutions (13%), on-chain transaction visibility and privacy (9%), and lack of integration with existing Enterprise Resource Planning/treasury management system bank platform (7%).
In terms of why one would use stablecoins, cross-border payments (coming and going) remain the top area of focus, followed by liquidity/treasury/cash management, accepting consumer payments, and paying sub-merchants.
The primary appeal for corporates is reduced transaction costs, faster cross-border payments, 24/7 settlement/liquidity, new product/revenue opportunities, and greater transparency and auditability. Institutions are primarily interested in providing on-/off-ramps and wallet infrastructure as well as serving as investment managers, while actually issuing their own stablecoins ranked dead last.
Some 41% of corporate stablecoin users reported cost savings higher than 10% compared to fiat alternatives, with the bulk of these (27% of the overall) reporting savings in the 11%-20% range and a lucky 9% reporting 31%-50% savings.
Over three-quarters (77%) of corporates reporting using USDC, with USDT second at 59%, followed by Circle’s EURC (45%), PYUSD (36%), and USDS/DAI and USDe tied at 14%.
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