USA₮, the dollar-backed stablecoin issued by Anchorage Digital Bank and backed by Tether, is expanding to Celo, marking its first blockchain deployment beyond Ethereum.
The move places the regulated token on a network that has become one of the most active rails for real-world use of the stablecoin.
Tether introduced the token in January as a U.S.-regulated product issued by the Anchorage Digital Bank under federal oversight by the OCC, positioning it as a domestic complement to USD₮ rather than a replacement for its flagship offshore stablecoin. The project was built to comply with the GENIUS Act and target US users through a more tightly regulated structure.
Celo gives USA₮ immediate access to a distribution network that appears already designed for stable payments. Opera said this month that MiniPay, its self-custodial wallet on Celo, has reached more than 14 million account registrations and processed more than 420 million transactions in more than 66 countries.
Opera and Celo also said the network now has more than 4.23 million USD₮ weekly active users, highlighting how stablecoins have become a core part of the chain’s business.
This partly explains why Celo was chosen as the first expansion channel. The network has leaned into payments with features like fee abstraction, which allows users to pay for gas in stablecoins instead of a native token, as well as a mobile-first design geared toward simple and cheap transfers. Celo describes itself as a layer 2 of Ethereum focused on fast, low-cost payments and real-world adoption.
Google Cloud is also part of the rollout, adding a broader infrastructure layer at launch. The company has expanded further into digital asset and payments infrastructure through products such as Universal Ledger, which it says is designed for programmable transfers and compliance-focused financial applications. In this case, the US deployment₮ connects this infrastructure to a privacy-preserving proof-of-humanity distribution model through Self.
