In an announcement on April 23, Coinbase Pro stated that it had enabled trading for the Tether stablecoin. The move is huge news as previously the leading exchange would only support its own native stablecoin, USDC.

The announcement added that support for USDT will generally be available in Coinbase’s supported jurisdictions, with the exception of New York State. The only version of USDT available will be the Ethereum ERC-20 standard.

Trading will begin on or after 6 PM Pacific Time Monday, April 26, if liquidity conditions are met, it added. The following pairs will be available: BTC/USDT, ETH/USDT, USDT/EUR, USDT/GBP, USDT/USD, and USDT/USDC.

Tether is not available on the regular Coinbase exchange yet and is limited to the Pro version which is more suited to professional and institutional traders.

Starting today, inbound transfers for USDT are now available in the regions where trading is supported. Traders cannot place orders and no orders will be filled. Trading will begin on or after 6PM PT on Monday April 26 , if liquidity conditions are met. https://t.co/F5o73g8o4v

— Coinbase Pro (@CoinbasePro) April 22, 2021

Tether Supply Surges

The move comes as Tether’s circulating supply approaches a milestone all-time high of 50 billion. According to the Tether Transparency report, there are currently 49.58 billion USDT in circulation.

Of that total, almost half of it, or 24.4 billion is based on Ethereum while the majority of the remainder, almost 26 billion is circulating on the Tron network.

Since the beginning of 2021, the total supply of Tether has increased by 137% outlining the surge in demand for stablecoins in DeFi related activities.

Comparatively, there is currently 13.4 billion USDC in circulation according to the company that owns it, Circle. It has had an even greater increase this year with 244% since January 1.

The third-largest stablecoin is Binance USD which currently has a circulation of 7 billion according to Coingecko. The surge in supply for BUSD this year has been even greater at over 600%, largely driven by Binance Smart Chain and DeFi yield farms on PancakeSwap.

Crypto Market Correction Deepens

Cryptocurrency markets are currently correcting hard with a decline in total market capitalization of 20% from its all-time high of $2.3 trillion on April 16. Over the past 24 hours, $280 billion has left the space as Bitcoin and its brethren continue to pull back.

According to Coingecko, BTC prices have slumped 9.4% on the day dropping below $50K for the first time since March 7. It has now formed a lower low since the previous correction which could be a sign of a major trend reversal.

[PRESS RELEASE – Please Read Disclaimer]

The ORBS token is now accessible via the Binance Smart Chain. Hodlers can swap tokens to and from the Ethereum network. Exploring this additional blockchain allows Orbs to leverage BSC’s potential for speed, low costs, and DeFi purposes.

This integration of ORBS onto Binance Smart Chain is made possible through the cross-chain bridge developed by Multichain.XYZ – a platform co-developed by Anyswap and Andre Cronje. By integrating this functionality, holders can now move ORBS to and from the Ethereum and BSC networks at their own leisure.

Given the potential for BSC in the DeFi space, support on this blockchain can unlock new use cases for Orbs. As BSC is home to near-daily launches of new projects, products, and services, it is one of the more exciting blockchains in the industry today. It has a competitive edge over Ethereum – which remains the main ecosystem for DeFi – by providing faster transactions at a much lower cost.

“While the Ethereum ecosystem is leading the pack in terms of DeFi activity and public interest, in the last couple of months we are seeing more and more DeFi alternatives growing on BSC. Says Orbs co-founder Tal Kol. “We knew we had to be part of the opportunities and innovations happening in the BSC ecosystem” he continued.

As more and more DeFi alternatives launch on BSC, it makes sense for the ORBS token to be interoperable. As Orbs is a prolific decentralized finance project with unique advantages and multiple upcoming projects under development, both ecosystems will benefit from this compatibility. With the help of cross-chain bridges – such as multichain-xyz – the DeFi ecosystem can continue to grow and evolve into more encompassing solutions.

Moreover, Orbs and the Binance exchange strengthened their partnership in January to promote ongoing innovation in the world of decentralized finance. They were the first core sponsors of the DeFi.org accelerator bootstrapping new projects and DeFi protocols.

Other projects being worked on by Orbs include Liquidity NEXUS – to bridge the gap between CeFi and DeFi – and the Orbs DeFi Portal – an aggregation service for information regarding Orbs and decentralized finance. There is also the Orbs DeFi Grant Program which aims to foster ongoing growth among contributors developing the network and ecosystem.

About Orbs

Orbs is a public blockchain infrastructure designed for mass usage applications – offering developers a proper mix of performance, cost, security and ease of use. The Orbs protocol is decentralized and executed by a public network of permissionless validators using Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus.