USA₮, the US Dollar-backed stablecoin issued by Anchorage Digital Bank, N.A., and backed by Tether, is now live on Celo, the Ethereum Layer 2 building programmable rails for global finance. Celo is only the second chain with native USA₮, following Ethereum, with functionality exclusive to the network: USA₮ arrives on Celo with gas currency support from day one, meaning users can pay transaction fees in USA₮ itself.
The launch deepens the ecosystem of Tether’s assets on Celo, which has emerged as the #1 distribution network for USD₮ by weekly active users (WAUs) following the asset’s native deployment in 2024. Celo now accounts for 28% of USD₮ transfers across blockchains, and saw a 67% user growth in Q2 2026 alone. The network also maintains over 90% market share of XAUt0 (USDT0’s omnichain Tether Gold) by unique holders, with adoption of both assets bolstered by the MiniPay stablecoin wallet.
“USA₮ brings a US dollar stablecoin designed to comply with federal regulations to the rails millions of people already use every day for remittances, savings, and commerce,,” said Marek Olszewski, Celo co-founder and Celo Core Co. CEO. “Bringing Anchorage and Tether’s trusted, compliant stablecoin infrastructure to Celo is the critical next step in our work building a trillion-dollar onchain economy that is more accessible, efficient, and equitable than the systems that came before.”
“Expanding USA₮ to Celo was a deliberate decision,” said Bo Hines, CEO of Tether US. “USA₮ is designed to operate in environments where digital dollars are already being used at scale, and that is what Celo has built, with hundreds of thousands of people transacting on the network every day.”
“Celo has spent years building for a world where financial access is mobile, global, and open. Bringing USAT to Celo through USDT0 is a step toward that future, giving people and builders access to stablecoins pegged to trusted American dollars that can move wherever they need them,” said Lorenzo Romagnoli, Co-Founder of USDT0. “The most promising financial apps and markets of the future will be built for a world that operates across borders and around the clock. U.S dollar value should be available everywhere people need them, and now that becomes a reality.”
USA₮ launches as a gas currency from day-one, made possible by fee abstraction, an original Celo design now formalized as CIP-64. The network’s fee abstraction allows accepted ERC-20 tokens to be used as gas currencies. The design removed one of crypto’s most persistent onboarding barriers: needing to hold a separate native token to make a transaction. Today, over 50% of gas fees on Celo are paid in stablecoins, with USD₮ as the predominant choice––and the standard has since been adopted by Ledger, the world leader in digital asset security, for its 8 million users.
MiniPay, built by Opera (NASDAQ: OPRA) exclusively on Celo with support from Tether, has onboarded over 18 million global users with fast, low-cost stablecoin transactions, 70+ Mini Apps, and a recently launched virtual card, in partnership with Visa and Gnosis Pay, offering 5% XAUt0 cashback. MiniPay will soon add USA₮ support, expanding its Tether-asset lineup beyond native USD₮ and XAUt0.
Valora, the crypto wallet designed to make transacting as easy as sending a text, now supports USA₮ on Celo. Further utility for Celo-native USA₮ across blue-chip protocols, including Morpho with Feather-curated vaults, Squid, Uniswap, and more, is coming soon.
USA₮ is issued by Anchorage Digital Bank, N.A., the first federally chartered digital asset bank in the United States, and is backed by reserves custodied by Cantor Fitzgerald and designed to meet the standards of the GENIUS Act.
Developers can start building with USA₮ today at docs.celo.org.