While, there is no “native” (issued directly by Tether Limited) USDT on Cardano (ADA), customers of the second largest proof-of-stake blockchain and its DeFis can now use the largest USD stablecoin for on-chain lending and borrowing operations.

USDT comes to Cardano’s (ADA) DeFi Liqwid

U.S. Dollar Tether (USDT), the world’s largest stablecoin by market capitalization, is now available in Liqwid, a noncustodial lending and borrowing protocol on Cardano (ADA) blockchain. The integration of USDT became possible thanks to decentralized cross-chain bridges by Wanchain (WAN), the team’s statement says.

USDT becomes the sixth asset of Liqwid’s ecosystem, alongside Cardano (ADA), Djed (DJED), iUSD (IUSD), Shen (SHEN) and USD Coin (USDC). During the first hours of its operations, users injected over $150,000 in USDT liquidity to Liqwid’s pools.

As of now, USDT cannot be collateralized on Liqwid. However, Cardano (ADA) DeFi enthusiasts can already borrow the asset using Liqwid’s frontend. Effective APY for borrowers is set at 2.02% now.

Cardano (ADA) started collaborating with Wanchain (WAN) in April 2023. In August 2023, Wanchain (WAN), acting as a sidechain to Cardano (ADA), activated 28 cross-chain decentralized bridges and brought all major cryptocurrencies to the ecosystem.

The list of networks that are now interoperable with Cardano (ADA) includes Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Arbitrum (ARB), Optimism (OP), Polygon (MATIC), Tron (TRX) and so on.

Stablecoin ecosystem on Cardano (ADA) growing, community enthusiast says

With the addition of USDT as another DeFi asset of the Cardano (ADA) ecosystem, traders and liquidity providers can streamline their operations and switch to more flexible trading and investing strategies.

Cardano (ADA) community activist ADA Whale, who also goes by @cardano_whale on X, is excited about the addition to Cardano’s (ADA) stack of supported stablecoins:

Stable coin options on Cardano are growing. Will be spreading mine between Djed, iUSD, USDC and USDT. And USDM when it launches. All come with different tradeoffs but grateful to have each of them, this was the most annoying gap in 2021-22.

At the same time, the ecosystem of Cardano-native stablecoins is still in its infancy. Djed (DJED), the most popular decentralized stablecoin on the blockchain, has an only $4.2 million market capitalization.

Besides Cardano-based DEXes MinSwap and Wingriders, DJED is available on Bitrue centralized exchange.

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