Tether, the largest stablecoin issuer with a market cap of $82 billion, has announced that it will discontinue support for Omni, a Bitcoin layer used for USDT transfers since 2014. The company will also relinquish support for Kusama (KSM) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) SLP implementations.
Over the years, the Omni Layer faced challenges due to the lack of popular tokens and the availability of USDT on other blockchains. This led many exchanges to favor alternative transport layers, leading to a decline in USDT usage on Bitcoin using the Omni Layer, Tether said in the announcement.
According to Tether’s transparency report, $240 million worth of tokens are issued on the Omni layer while $1.4 million and $980,000 are issued on Kusama and Bitcoin Cash respectively. Tether will stop issuing USDT on Omni, Kusama and Bitcoin Cash from Aug. 17, while redemptions will continue for the next 12 months.
The price of tether has slumped by 0.12% over the past 24 hours as it trades at $0.998, according to market data.