USDT began life on Bitcoin. But Bitcoin did not remain the place where it really grew. In a market analysis, MarsBit went back over that history and said a new technical shift may now be opening the way for Tether to come back.
The first 100 USDT were issued on Omni Layer on Oct. 6, 2014. Omni is a protocol built on top of Bitcoin. By Oct. 2, 2026, roughly $80 million in USDT was still sitting on Omni, or 0.04% of the current circulating supply, based on DefiLlama data cited in the article.
Why USDT moved away from Bitcoin
The article says USDT first launched on Bitcoin because Tether wanted to fully tap Bitcoin’s potential. But back in 2014, Bitcoin simply was not built to carry stablecoins and other tokenized assets at scale.
Under Omni, putting asset data onto Bitcoin meant fighting with ordinary transactions for the same tight block space. Fees went up. Growth hit a ceiling. The article also says Bitcoin’s open-source, decentralized development style made protocol changes and upgrades slower to ship.
So Tether later issued USDT on Ethereum on Sept. 11, 2017, and on Tron in April 2019. MarsBit says both networks were more centralized overall, since each had a leading organization supplying funding. With one organization directing development, it was easier to set fixed roadmaps, and work moved faster than it did on Bitcoin.
That led to another turning point on Aug. 17, 2023, when Tether stopped issuing USDT on Omni because demand was weak, though redemption remained available.
Where digital dollars are today
Stablecoins in circulation now total about $313 billion, the article says, citing DefiLlama data from Oct. 2, 2026. USDT by itself makes up about 59% of that market.
It gives this breakdown of USDT supply by network:
- Tron: 50.2%
- Ethereum: 40.1%
- BNB Smart Chain: 5%
- Solana: 1.5%
The article also says stablecoins are no longer just trading tools. They have become a payment method too. Citing a report from Bessemer Venture Partners, it says real payments settled with stablecoins hit $400 billion in 2025, twice the level of the previous year. Around 60% of that activity came from business-to-business payments, including supplier invoices, payroll, and cross-border billing.
On Tron and Ethereum, those payments and balances are fully public, according to the piece.
The technical change behind the new push
The article’s core argument is technical. It centers on the client-side validation model used by the RGB Protocol on Bitcoin and says that model fixes the three main problems that showed up in the Omni era.
Block space
Asset data does not get written straight into Bitcoin blocks. Instead, Bitcoin carries only a hash of a few dozen bytes inside a standard transaction. And if a Tapret commitment is used, the article says there is no extra byte cost at all.
Fees
Since asset data no longer has to compete with ordinary payments for block space, the fee for a token transfer can be close to the fee for a normal Bitcoin transaction.
Capacity
A single Bitcoin transaction can anchor many transfers, including transfers linked to different contracts. The same asset can also move through Lightning Network channels.
The article says the design also brings a privacy upside. With client-side validation, only the users involved in an asset transfer can see details like amounts and transfer history, because the plaintext data stays on their own devices. That is different from a public ledger model, where balances and movements are visible to everyone. MarsBit adds that if regulators need certain data for internal processes, RGB lets holders reveal only part of the information.
Even then, the protocol stays anchored to Bitcoin. The "digital fingerprint" of the asset data, meaning the hash, is written into a Bitcoin transaction through an OP_RETURN output or a Tapret commitment. The recipient then checks the off-chain data against the on-chain hash to confirm the received tokens are valid.
The article says this allows users to use the Bitcoin blockchain without changing Bitcoin’s main code.
Tether’s return to Bitcoin and the timeline that followed
MarsBit says Tether chose to return to Bitcoin because of RGB’s new approach. It also says Tether’s first plan, announced in January 2025, used Taproot Assets.
The article quotes Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino as saying: "Bitcoin deserves a truly native, lightweight, private and scalable stablecoin."
It then lists the developments that came after that:
- August 2025: Tether announced a plan to issue USDT on RGB.
- February 2026: Utexo added on-chain RGB support to Tether’s Wallet Development Kit, or WDK, and launched the first module for issuing RGB assets.
- August 2026: Utexo’s second module went live in WDK, bringing RGB assets into Lightning Network channels.
- September 2026: UniSat was announced as the next launch partner, and the RGB v0.11.1 core library dropped its release candidate tag.
- October 2026: Utexo received a commercial license from Tether to issue USDT through exchanges, wallets, and payment service providers.
Why the article calls it good news for Bitcoin
The analysis says the return of dollar-denominated assets is good news not only for Tether or the companies building the rails, but for Bitcoin users in general.
The logic is pretty simple: more activity on Bitcoin means more transactions and more fees. That lifts miner revenue for securing the network, which then strengthens network security.
The article applies the same thinking to the Lightning Network. It says many Lightning channels now hold capital that routes very few payments. If dollar assets start moving through those channels, node operators could begin collecting routing fees from capital that is mostly idle today. And more users on what it calls the most reliable blockchain would mean more services becoming available.
The bridge design deserves close attention
One part of the process gets special focus in the article: the cross-chain bridge.
USDT is issued by Tether, and the company cannot create dollars freely. Under its own rules, every token has to be backed by reserves. So the dollars coming to Bitcoin are not newly issued, at least for now. Instead, the article says Utexo’s bridge locks existing USDT on another network, such as Ethereum or Tron, and then mints the same amount of USDT on RGB.
This process depends on signers operating inside secure hardware enclaves. One signer handles minting on Bitcoin, while moving back requires a threshold of signatures from multiple independent signers, according to the piece.
Once USDT is on Bitcoin, it works like any other RGB asset. Recipients verify each transfer through client-side validation, Bitcoin’s UTXO model stops double spending, and only the two parties in a transaction know the amounts and balances. Those dollars can also move inside Lightning channels.
No deployment date yet
The article ends by saying that 12 years after the first 100 USDT were issued on Omni, the dollar has started its trip back to Bitcoin. It calls stablecoins arriving on RGB a milestone not just for the companies involved, but for every Bitcoin user too.
As of the time of writing, no official deployment date had been announced. Even so, the article says five steps over fourteen months all point the same way: digital dollars are getting close to home.