Stablecoin Giant Tether Launches Wallet for USDT, Bitcoin and Gold-Backed Tokens

Tether launched a self-custodial digital wallet on Tuesday called Tether.Wallet, offering support not only for its flagship USDT stablecoin and USAT for the U.S. market, but also Bitcoin and its gold-backed token, XAUT.

The wallet supports USDT and XAUT across Ethereum and the Polygon, Plasma, and Arbitrum networks. It also supports USAT on Ethereum, as well as Bitcoin both on mainnet and via the Lightning Network.

Users can send funds using human-readable Tether names rather than complex wallet addresses, with transaction fees paid directly in the asset being transferred—eliminating the need to hold separate network or gas tokens. The platform is built on Tether’s open-source Wallet Development Kit (WDK).

“With more than 570 million people already using Tether’s technology, the next step is making that digital infrastructure even more accessible and usable by the end users,” said Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino, in a statement. “The objective is to remove the complexity that has prevented broader adoption while preserving the properties that make the digital assets technology valuable. Users should be able to send value as easily as sending a message, without relying on intermediaries and without giving up control of their assets.”

Ardoino further referred to the wallet as “the People’s Wallet,” due to being designed for mainstream users and not just crypto natives, and suggested it would be “ready for a future in which tens of billions of humans, machines, and trillions of AI agents will transact seamlessly at the speed of light.”

The company projects tens of millions of new wallets added per quarter as it leverages its position as the world’s largest stablecoin issuer. The wallet launch represents Tether’s most direct move yet into end-user infrastructure, potentially competing with established players like MetaMask and Phantom.

Tether operates USDT, the most widely used stablecoin with a market value of nearly $185 billion. The company also issues Tether Gold (XAUT), a digital token representing ownership of one troy ounce of physical gold stored in professional vaults, backed 1:1 by allocated gold holdings. Tether also teamed with Anchorage Digital to launch USAT, a stablecoin focused on the U.S. market, in January.