Tether, issuer of the most popular stablecoin USDT , rolled out Tuesday a self-custodial crypto wallet aimed at putting its stablecoin network directly in users’ hands, aiming to make crypto payments as easy as sending a message.
The new app, called tether.wallet, allows users to hold and send USDT and USAT (USAT) stablecoins, gold-backed token XAUT (XAUT) and bitcoin across multiple blockchains. It removes common friction points by letting users pay transaction fees in the asset they send and by replacing long wallet addresses with human-readable names like “[email protected].”
The move is notable for Tether because it marks a shift to a consumer-facing app from being an intermediary 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 brings those 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 the firm developed 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 foundation 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 trillions of AI agents will transact seamlessly at the speed of light.”