Authors: Peggy, Lin Wanwan, BlockBeats
The most stable asset in the crypto market is the US dollar, which has no identity card.
Over the past decade, USDT has transformed itself into the "de facto dollar" of the crypto world with its $170 billion in assets and ubiquitous liquidity. But the more successful it becomes, the more acute its identity anxiety becomes: a dollar without US backing remains a vulnerability.
In recent years, Circle has applied for a trust banking license, Paxos has built a global clearing network, and Visa and Mastercard have also increased their investment in stablecoin settlements. In contrast, Tether has remained confined to the narrative of an "offshore shadow empire."
Under regulatory pressure and competition, in September 2025, Tether, the parent company of USDT, finally came up with a brand new answer: USAT. This was its first attempt to fill the long-missing identity card.
Meanwhile, Tether appointed 29-year-old former White House advisor Bo Hines as CEO. Ten years ago, he was a star wide receiver for the Yale football team; now, he has been thrust into the most sensitive battlefield of the global financial markets, becoming Tether's "legitimate face" in the United States.
Hines' appointment was not a sudden addition. In January 2025, the White House established the Presidential Advisory Council on Digital Assets, and his name was prominently listed as an executive director. At only 28 years old, he participated in promoting the legislation of the GENIUS Act, laying the cornerstone for the US stablecoin regulatory framework. Just a few months later, he resigned from the White House and joined Tether, the world's largest stablecoin issuer, taking on the important task of "expanding territory" in the US market.
For Tether, this is a strategic test of deeply embedding itself in the US political and regulatory system. Hines's involvement is both a bargaining chip for Tether in Washington and the first step in its proactive effort to correct its image as a "shadow empire."
But this is just the beginning. What truly allows USAT to shed the image of an "offshore dollar clone" is the compliance strategy it has designed: from introducing high-level political and economic resources in the United States to institutional arrangements that connect with traditional financial markets, Tether is trying to use three cards to embed itself in the regulatory narrative and capital market logic of the United States.
The issuance of USAT is far more than just an expansion of the stablecoin landscape. It signifies that Tether is beginning to build a "legitimate clone" mechanism for itself: no longer content with being a global money transfer channel, but aiming to reshape its identity and become a compliant part of the US financial order.
The birth of a legitimate clone: USAT's three cards
Over the past few years, stablecoins have become one of the most elusive assets in financial history. Neither entirely the US dollar nor entirely a cryptocurrency, they have permeated every corner of the globe in the last five years. Tether, currently approaching a $500 billion valuation, has built a massive "shadow dollar" system with USDT: in Latin America, it's a lifeline for remittances; in Africa, it has replaced local inflation currencies; and in Southeast Asia, it has become a settlement tool for cross-border e-commerce.
However, as the largest supplier in this system, Tether has always operated in the margins of regulation. Vague audits, complex offshore structures, and the looming shadows of money laundering and sanctions have earned it the label of a "shadow empire." For US regulators, Tether's existence is a paradox: on the one hand, it has promoted the globalization of the dollar; on the other hand, it is seen as a potential systemic risk. The world's most widely circulated "digital dollar" lacks legitimate US legitimacy.
This identity misalignment finally forced Tether to come up with a new solution. In September 2025, it launched USAT, specifically for the US market. This is not a simple iteration, but an experiment with three cards: people, money, and systems. Tether is using these three steps to gamble on whether a shadow dollar can be accepted by the American narrative.
First card: People
USAT's first card is its people: Bo Hines' political endorsement.
Bo Hines, 29 years old. In college, he was the starting wide receiver for the Yale football team. An injury forced him to end his athletic career early, and he subsequently entered politics.
In 2020, he ran for a congressional seat as a Republican candidate but was unsuccessful. However, he subsequently entered the policy arena. From 2023, Hines served on the White House Digital Assets Advisory Council, later rising to executive director. According to public information, during his tenure, he participated in drafting the GENIUS Act, the initial draft of the first stablecoin regulatory legislation in the United States, which served as a reference for many subsequent proposals.
In August 2025, Hines left the White House. On August 19, Tether announced the appointment of Hines as a strategic advisor, responsible for compliance and policy communications in the US market. In the same announcement, Tether also stated that it would launch a US-regulated stablecoin, USAT, in the coming months.
Less than a month later, in September 2025, Tether announced the launch of USAT and officially appointed Hines as USAT's first CEO. This means that he will lead the product's business development and regulatory compliance in the US market.
Public information shows that this is the first time Tether has brought in an executive with a White House background into its management team. Previously, Tether's management team mainly consisted of individuals with financial or technological backgrounds, lacking direct experience in U.S. policy.
Hines's involvement has tied USAT to the U.S. regulatory environment from the very beginning.
Second card: Money
The second card is the credit backing Tether's money. In the past, the composition of Tether's reserves has been controversial. Early audit documents showed that USDT reserves included a large amount of commercial paper, short-term loans, and a portfolio of assets with difficult-to-trace origins. This lack of transparency has become the biggest focus of external criticism regarding Tether: is it truly "one coin for one dollar"?
In the design of USAT, Tether attempted to dispel such concerns. A September 2025 announcement revealed that USAT's reserve custodian was Cantor Fitzgerald. This investment bank, founded in 1945, is one of the U.S. Treasury's primary dealers, with a long history of involvement in the underwriting and distribution of U.S. Treasury bonds, and enjoys a strong credit standing on Wall Street.
According to Tether's plan, Cantor Fitzgerald will ensure that USAT's reserve assets are primarily composed of U.S. Treasury securities. This means that USAT's value is no longer supported by a complex offshore asset structure, but is directly anchored to the liquidity and credit system of the U.S. Treasury market.
This arrangement allows Tether to establish a deeper connection with the US financial system at the asset level: transforming from a supplier of "shadow dollars" into a "distributor on the US Treasury bond chain." According to publicly available information, this is also the first time Tether has explicitly included Wall Street primary dealers as core partners in its products.
The third card: the system
The issuance and compliance of USAT will be handled by Anchorage Digital Bank. This is one of the first digital asset banks in the United States to obtain a federal trust license, and one of the few compliant entities directly subject to federal regulation. Unlike USDT, which relies on an offshore structure, USAT's reserves and auditing processes will be incorporated into the US regulatory framework. This not only complies with the GENIUS Act's regulatory requirements for stablecoin issuance, but also signifies that Tether has completed an "identity registration" at the institutional level.
The choice of location is equally intriguing. Tether has established USAT's headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina—the second-largest financial center in the United States, home to traditional financial institutions such as Bank of America. Compared to New York and Washington, D.C., Charlotte offers both a strong financial atmosphere and is relatively far removed from the regulatory spotlight. This detail suggests that Tether is not content with merely changing institutional designs, but is attempting to "truly implement" these changes in actual operations.
USAT is therefore not just a new stablecoin, but a formal handshake between Tether and the US market. The political maneuvering of Bo Hines, the financial maneuvering of Cantor, and the institutional maneuvering of Anchorage constitute a complete set of compliance measures, propelling Tether from a supplier of "shadow dollars" to a new identity as an "institutionalized participant."
However, how far this transformation can go remains an open question. Tether's fundamental nature has not changed: its business path remains global, its structure remains offshore, and its fund flows remain complex. While USAT may provide a US identity, it is unlikely to immediately rewrite the market's basic perception of Tether.
The launch of USAT signifies that Tether's move to issue stablecoins extends into an identity reconstruction: the shadow dollar is beginning to knock on Wall Street's door.
Will the stablecoin market landscape be reshaped?
In the US market, Tether's new moves are aimed directly at Circle and its USDC.
For the past few years, USDC has been a representative of the compliant market in the United States. However, compared with USDT, USDC is much smaller in size and circulation. As of September 2025, its market capitalization was approximately $70 billion, accounting for 25-26% of the stablecoin market.
Although its size is only one-third that of USDT, USDC has established solid trust in US politics and Wall Street thanks to its exclusive partnership with Coinbase and endorsements from institutions such as BlackRock.
Circle even repurchased its shares in the joint venture Center in 2024, becoming the sole issuer of USDC to further strengthen its control. For a long time, the implicit narrative of USDC has been: US compliance = security, offshore markets = risk.
However, this very path also gave Tether room to exert pressure.
Tether's CEO Paolo Ardoino has repeatedly emphasized that the significance of USAT lies in breaking the potential monopoly that USDC might form in the US market.
He stated bluntly, "Without USAT, the US stablecoin market might be locked in the hands of a few institutions." In other words, USAT's strategic mission is not just a product upgrade, but a direct confrontation with USDC in the market.
Tether's launch of USAT is essentially an attempt to use its massive size to fill the "compliance gap." The significance of USAT lies in allowing Tether to combine size and compliance for the first time, thereby posing a direct threat to USDC's competitive advantage.
If Circle is a top-down compliance advocate with its feet firmly planted in the United States, then Tether is building a "dual narrative" through USAT: maintaining a vast network of "gray empires" globally while simultaneously creating a "compliance clone" in the US market.
The future stablecoin market is likely to evolve into a "dual-track structure": USDT will continue to maintain a strong user base globally, especially in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia, while USAT will focus on the US domestic market and institutional clients. This structure can both stabilize Tether's advantages in emerging markets and attract more institutional funds from a compliance perspective, bringing new expansion momentum to the entire sector.
For Tether, this is not just about issuing a new coin or going public; it's about a transformation of identity. Once it can be listed on the US capital market, it can completely shed the label of "shadow empire" and enter the global financial stage as a "dollar company."
However, Tether's offensive is bound to provoke a response from its competitors. Circle is likely to accelerate its cooperation with regulators and institutions to further solidify USDC's compliance moat; licensed issuers such as Paxos may take the opportunity to expand their presence in niche markets such as payments and cross-border settlements.
Traditional financial giants have also shown interest, with Visa, Mastercard, and Wall Street investment banks all exploring how to embed stablecoins into their existing systems. It is foreseeable that the launch of USAT will not only be the starting point for Tether's transformation, but may also ignite a new round of competition in the stablecoin arena.
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The launch of USAT has brought unprecedented opportunities to Tether, but it has also brought new risks and challenges. Will the market believe that a much-criticized "shadow empire" can truly dismantle itself with a compliant clone?
Historical experience shows that there are precedents for the "whitewashing" of gray forces.
In the late 19th century, American society generally distrusted financial capital, and the Morgan family was even denounced as a "financial oligarch." Strictly speaking, Morgan did not break the law, but in an era lacking modern regulation, their vast capital and influence were often seen as "hijacking the public interest," thus making them a "gray force" of the time.
However, banker John Pierpont Morgan changed his image through his actions: while helping the government issue national debt and resolve the fiscal crisis, he also helped the railroad company restructure its debt. Over time, it transformed from a "capital oligarch" into a "financial agent of the state."
Tether's strategy of buying large amounts of US Treasury bonds and promoting compliant stablecoins is actually similar to that of JPMorgan in the past, which is to obtain legal status by solving problems for the country.
However, not all "gray giants" can successfully complete such a transformation.
As the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance initially operated almost entirely offshore, operating outside of regulatory oversight. In recent years, it has begun applying for licenses in markets such as France and Abu Dhabi, attempting to become compliant and trying to penetrate the US market. However, in the US, it encountered the most stringent regulatory resistance, ultimately forcing it to scale back and tighten its operations. This cautionary tale demonstrates that regulators will not easily allow gray-market giants to "go legal."
This means that Tether's future remains uncertain. Reserve transparency, compliance, and interactions with regulators will be key indicators that will continue to be scrutinized in the coming years.
At the same time, signs of accelerating competition are already emerging.
Circle is applying for a U.S. National Trust Bank license to strengthen its compliance capabilities and further solidify its ties with regulators and institutional investors; Paxos has revealed a significant increase in demand for its stablecoin infrastructure and launched a "Global Dollar Network" with Mastercard, attempting to expand the use of dollar-denominated stablecoins; Visa is also continuously expanding its support for stablecoin settlements, pushing for the integration of such products into existing payment systems. Meanwhile, Plasma is attempting to directly embed stablecoins into the underlying pipeline of global payment networks, focusing on on-chain clearing and cross-border payments.
The stablecoin market is transitioning from its early, unregulated growth phase to a more intense and institutionalized stage of competition.
USAT allowed Tether to submit its credentials in Washington for the first time. The real test isn't on the blockchain, but at the conference table: whoever gets a name on the regulatory agenda will be qualified to define the next generation of the digital dollar. Whether this shadow empire can step into the sunlight will be the biggest question mark in crypto finance.
