Tether partnered with the TON Foundation to launch USDT on the $60 million Open Network (TON) blockchain, announced at the Token2049 event in Dubai, making TON the 11th largest blockchain out of the 16 backed by Tether.
This collaboration also led to the introduction of a stablecoin, Tether Gold (XAUT), pegged to gold, on the TON platform, and cross-border payments were advertised as free, instant and as simple as sending a direct message to Telegram to the messenger's 900 million users.
Despite the new issuance on TON and other blockchains, the majority of Tether's $109.8 billion offering remains on the Tron network, with Ethereum and Solana being the second and third largest networks for Tether.
If USDT payments on the TON blockchain do indeed turn out to be free, then very soon the primacy among all 16 blockchains on which USDT runs will belong to TON.
In addition, there are many who have tried to create a stablecoin tied to gold, but the market trusts Tether more, the capitalization of XAUT has already passed $0.5 billion.
The strategy of the TON fund is very winning. If USDT on the TON blockchain will quickly take the leading role among all USDT blockchains, thanks to free transactions, then the largest exchanges, such as Binance will have to flood USDT on TON, and accordingly TON itself, which today is among the top 10 cryptocurrencies on Coingecko.
Although Pavel Durov and the Telegram team are not officially related to the TON project in any way, the MO is very similar to what Durov is doing. Making transactions of the world's most popular stablecoin free is very Durov-esque. But Pavel Durov has nothing to do with it, of course.