Tether, the issuer of USDT, has announced the launch of tether.wallet, a self-custodial digital wallet designed to bring its stablecoin and digital asset infrastructure directly to end users.
The wallet supports USDT on Ethereum, Polygon, Plasma, and Arbitrum; XAU₮ on the same networks; USA₮ on Ethereum; and Bitcoin both on-chain and via the Lightning Network, with additional blockchain support planned following the initial release.
The launch marks Tether's first direct consumer-facing product after more than a decade operating as underlying infrastructure for the digital asset economy. As of March 2026, Tether's technology is used by more than 570 million people globally, with tens of millions of new wallets added per quarter across emerging and developed markets.
Design principles and friction reduction
tether.wallet is fully self-custodial, with all transactions signed locally on the user's device before being broadcast to the network. Private keys and recovery phrases remain solely in the user's control at all times. The application is built on Tether's open-source Wallet Development Kit, designed to allow individuals, machines, and AI agents to build and control self-custodial digital asset wallets.
The wallet addresses two persistent barriers to broader digital asset adoption. First, it replaces long blockchain wallet addresses with human-readable identifiers in the format name@tether.me, reducing the risk of irreversible transfer errors. Second, it eliminates the need to hold separate network or gas tokens, with transaction fees paid directly in the asset being transferred.
The application automatically surfaces available networks and balances, abstracting underlying blockchain infrastructure from the user experience. Tether has stated its long-term vision encompasses a system in which billions of people, machines, and AI agents transact across the wallet infrastructure simultaneously.
Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, said the objective is to remove the complexity that has prevented broader adoption while preserving the properties that make digital asset technology valuable, enabling users to send value as easily as sending a message without relying on intermediaries.
