Tether Has Resumed Lending Its Stablecoins: WSJ

The USDt issuer, which announced plans last year to wind down lending, showed an increase in lending in a quarterly report.

Tether, issuer of the U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin tether (USDt), has confirmed it has resumed lending the stablecoins less than a year after saying it would stop lending, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Tether’s latest quarterly financial update showed $5.5 billion of loans as of June 30, up from $5.3 billion in the previous quarter. The increase marks a shift in strategy from December 2022, when Tether announced plans to gradually eliminate its lending during 2023.

Tether spokeswoman Alex Welch told The Wall Street Journal that the company had received “a few short-term loan requests from clients with whom we have cultivated longstanding relationships, and we made the decision to accommodate those requests.” The loans will be eliminated by 2024.

Tether doesn’t disclose much information in general about borrowers of its stablecoins or the types of collateral accepted for the loans.

The idea of a stablecoin like USDT is to remain stable enough to be traded one-to-one for a U.S. dollar at any time.

Guaranteeing that peg, and avoiding a multibillion-dollar collapse like the Terra ecosystem after its Luna stablecoin destabilized, requires an ample amount of assets in reserve to cover such transactions. Loans could go unpaid or the collateral collected could prove insufficient to cover a loss, which could pose a potential risk.