Ripple's RLUSD Hits $2.345 Billion Market Cap as Acquisition Strategy Builds Institutional Settlement Rails

CoinDesk reported on October 2 that Tether-backed Utexo plans to issue the US dollar-pegged stablecoin USDT on the Bitcoin network within October. The company's co-founder told CoinDesk that it has obtained a commercial license covering the issuance of USDT and the use of Tether's trademark. USDT was born on Bitcoin in 2014, but its main circulation base has since shifted to Ethereum and Tron, and this plan marks an effort to expand its use on Bitcoin again after more than a decade. Utexo is building a mechanism that allows USDT to be sent without disclosing transaction details, and plans to support direct exchange between Bitcoin and USDT as well as loans collateralized by Bitcoin, enabling exchanges, wallets, and payment providers to handle USDT on Bitcoin. The technology underpinning this mechanism is RGB, which handles assets on Bitcoin; it transmits and receives without placing transaction details on a public ledger, with the parties involved verifying them, which differs from Ethereum and Tron, where balance changes and transaction contents are recorded on a public ledger. Its approach to illicit use also differs from USDT on Ethereum: the co-founder explained that freezing assets in the same way is technically impossible, so the company will blacklist assets linked to sanctioned entities or illegal activity and share that information with exchanges and others, and blacklisted assets cannot be withdrawn as USDT to Ethereum or Tron. After issuance, the company plans to move forward with support for the Lightning Network.