Tether Investments backed LayerZero Labs to support LayerZero’s cross-chain protocol powering USDt0. LayerZero’s Omnichain infrastructure (OFT) enables liquid stablecoin use across networks and “agentic finance” use cases. The move is essentially a bet on the technology underpinning USDt0, a blockchain-agnostic version of Tether’s dollar-pegged token that has moved over $70 billion across blockchains in less than a year, according to a press release the company shared.
Tether’s investment comes on the heels of USDt0’s deployment by Everdawn Labs and is built using LayerZero’s Omnichain Fungible Token (OFT) standard. Alongside their tokenized Tether gold token, XAUt0, the projects are seen as real-world tests of LayerZero’s interoperability framework. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Tether did not reply to a request for comment.
LayerZero’s ZRO token gained as much as 10% on the news, but quickly reversed, now lower by 3% over the past 24 hours. The stablecoin giant has been using the billions it generates from backing USDT tokens in circulation to make a wide range of investments. These include a majority stake in Latin American agricultural firm Adecoagro (AGRO), a privacy-focused health app, and a stake in video-sharing platform Rumble (RUM). It has been aggressively accumulating gold with reports of buying up to USD 1 billion of gold per month and, earlier this month, a $150 million stake in Gold.com to boost the distribution of tokenized gold.
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