Key Takeaways:
- Tether launched tether.wallet on April 14, 2026, giving its 570 million users direct self-custodial access to USDT, XAUT, and bitcoin.
- Tether’s WDK open-source toolkit powers the wallet, enabling humans, machines, and AI agents to transact on Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Lightning Network.
- CEO Paolo Ardoino says Tether’s next phase targets tens of billions of future users, with additional blockchain support planned after the initial release.
Tether Releases Open-Source WDK-Powered Wallet for Humans, Machines, and AI Agents
The new wallet supports USDT, USAT, XAUT, and bitcoin across multiple networks, including Ethereum, Polygon, Plasma, Arbitrum, and the Lightning Network. Users can send funds using a human-readable address format such as [email protected] rather than conventional alphanumeric wallet strings.
Tether says its technology currently reaches more than 570 million people worldwide, with tens of millions of new wallets added each quarter. The company operates in more than 160 countries and positions USDT as the most widely used digital dollar in circulation.
For most of its existence, Tether functioned as infrastructure, providing liquidity and settlement tools to exchanges, businesses, and developers. The newly developed tether.wallet marks the company’s first consumer-facing product, making that underlying network directly accessible to individual users.
The wallet is fully self-custodial. Private keys and recovery phrases are generated and stored on the user’s device. No transactions are signed on a server, and the company does not hold user funds at any point.
Transaction fees are paid in the asset being transferred, removing the need for users to hold separate gas tokens. The wallet automatically identifies available networks and balances, handling the technical routing in the background.
Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, said the company has built what he called the widest financial inclusion success story in history. He said the goal of tether.wallet is to let users send value as easily as sending a message, without relying on intermediaries or giving up control of their assets.
Ardoino also pointed to a longer-term vision in which tens of billions of humans, machines, and AI agents transact at high speed using the same underlying infrastructure. The wallet is built on Tether’s open-source Wallet Development Kit, known as WDK, which is designed to allow any entity, human or automated, to build and control self-custodial wallets.
Tether says the people most likely to benefit from the wallet are those in high- inflation countries and developing markets where access to basic financial services has historically been limited. The company estimates this population represents close to half of the world.
At launch, the wallet supports USDT on Ethereum, Polygon, Plasma, and Arbitrum; XAUT on the same four networks; USAT on Ethereum; and bitcoin both onchain and via the Lightning Network. Additional blockchain support is planned following the initial release.
The company did not announce a rollout timeline for the additional network integrations. Tether issues USDT and manages reserves backing the stablecoin, which remains the highest- volume digital dollar in the crypto market. The company is privately held and headquartered in El Salvador. USDT’s market cap stands at $184.688 billion as of April 14, 2026.
The new tether.wallet enters a competitive field that includes hardware wallet providers, mobile-first crypto apps, and bank-adjacent fintech products. Its stated advantage is a combination of existing user scale, asset breadth, and infrastructure reach that few competitors can match at this stage.
Source: https://news.bitcoin.com/tether-launches-consumer-wallet-app-with-human-readable-addresses-and-no-gas-tokens/
