USDT issuer Tether is trying to establish a firm foundation for the stablecoin into the thriving international creator economy. In a fresh development, Tether has wired a funding of $200 million into Whop, which is marketplace designed for creators and merchants to sell digital products.
Tether’s investment has pumped Whop’s valuation up to $1.6 billion, the latter said in its official statement.
While Whop will use the funding to grow the platform features and AI capabilities, it will also use Tether’s Wallet Development Kit (WDK) to upgrade the payment infrastructure for creators and merchants.
Whop foresees that stitching the Tether WDK with its services would present its community with a new self-custodial digital wallet offering services like lending and borrowing to over 18.4 million of its users.
“Stablecoins and wallets become most powerful when they are embedded directly into people’s lives, supporting their businesses, activities, families, and individual stories,” said Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino.
The funding is aimed at fueling Whop’s global expansion to regions including Latin America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region.
“The next generation of business on the internet is global from day one, and payments need to move as freely as the internet itself,” said Steven Schwartz, CEO and Co-Founder of Whop.
Tether’s USDT stablecoin is touted as the largest in the world, with a market cap of $183.65 billion.
With regions like the E.U. and the U.S. defining stableocin regulations, these tokens are likely to clock significant adoption. Tether is now taking steps to ensure that it stays ahead in competition against other players like Circle (USDC) and USD1 (World Liberty Financial) among others.
Just earlier this month, Tether has rolled out a USDT directory to let users see regions where USDT is being used and what use cases the stablecoin is used for.
The platform has also been making big investments in advanced finance platforms to make USDT a part of their ecosystems. This month itself, Tether invested a total of $100 million in Anchorage Digital, which is a federally chartered crypto bank.