Tether, issuer of the most popular USDT stablecoin on Tuesday rolled out a self-custodial crypto wallet aimed at putting its stablecoin network directly into the hands of users, aiming to make crypto payments as simple as sending a message.
The new app, called tether.wallet, allows users to hold and send USDT and USAT stablecoins (USAT), XAUT gold-backed tokens (XAUT), and bitcoins. on several blockchains. It removes common friction points by allowing users to pay transaction fees in the asset they send and replacing long wallet addresses with human-readable names like “[email protected].”
The move is notable for Tether as it marks a shift from a consumer-facing application to an intermediary role in crypto payments issuing the most popular digital dollar, the $185 billion USDT token. Tether said more than 570 million users already interact with its technology, largely indirectly through exchanges and payment rails. The new wallet integrates these functions into a direct interface, where users control their private keys and sign transactions on their own devices.
The launch builds on Tether’s Wallet Development Kit (WDK), an open source toolkit developed by the company for third-party efforts such as the Rumble wallet, which uses Tether’s infrastructure to enable creator payments and peer-to-peer transfers.
“Tether.wallet is ‘the people’s wallet,'” said Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino, “because it truly reflects the natural evolution of Tether’s role, from building the foundations of the digital asset economy to making it directly usable by anyone, ready for a future in which tens of billions of humans, machines, and billions of AI agents transact seamlessly at the speed of light.”
