Tether Eyes Mexican Market With Peso Stablecoin

Tether, the company behind the largest dollar-pegged stablecoin on the market, USDT, has launched a new stablecoin pegged to the Mexican Peso.

Tether Launches Fourth Stablecoin

Tether is expanding its stablecoin offerings into Latin America. 

The company behind the $73 billion USDT stablecoin announced the launch of its fourth fiat-pegged asset Thursday, this time fixed to the price of the Mexican Peso. 

The new token, which will trade under the ticker MXNT, follows on from the company’s previous stablecoins USDT, EURT, and CNHT, pegged to the U.S. dollar, Euro, and Chinese Yuan, respectively. Initial blockchain support for MXNT includes Ethereum, Tron, and Polygon, with the possibility of launching on additional networks in the future. 

“We have seen a rise in cryptocurrency usage in Latin America over the last year that has made it apparent that we need to expand our offerings,” said Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino, explaining the company’s decision to start offering a Peso-pegged token. “Introducing a Peso-pegged stablecoin will provide a store of value for those in the emerging markets and in particular Mexico,” he said. 

According to data from crypto payments firm TripleA, 40% of Mexican companies are looking to adopt blockchain technology in some form, while over 3.1 million people in the country currently own cryptocurrencies. In April, Mexican senator Indira Kempis announced that the Central American country is also preparing legislation to adopt Bitcoin as an official currency, further highlighting the appetite for digital assets. 

While Tether capitalizes on the demand for crypto infrastructure in Latin America, it is also battling controversy surrounding its dollar-pegged USDT stablecoin. Earlier in May, USDT briefly lost its peg amid market-wide volatility caused by the fall of UST, an algorithmic stablecoin native to the Terra network. Although USDT quickly regained its parity with the dollar following the incident, the brief depeg resurrected fears surrounding the stablecoin’s backing. 

Tether has repeatedly come under fire for the lack of transparency surrounding the assets the company holds to back USDT. However, recent attestation reports combined with the company’s commitment to reducing the amount of commercial paper backing the top stablecoin have helped reassure holders of USDT stability. Whether Latin Americans will embrace the new MXNT token despite the recent controversy remains to be seen. 

Disclosure: At the time of writing this feature, the author owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.