Tether Invests $100 Million in Agriculture
09 Sep, 2024 ● Coin news
Tether, the company behind the world’s largest stablecoin, USDT, has invested $100 million to acquire a 9.8% stake in Latin American agricultural giant Adecoagro. This marks Tether's first venture into the agriculture and food sector.
Previously, Tether had made strategic investments in sectors like artificial intelligence, peer-to-peer platforms, Bitcoin mining, and digital education initiatives, according to a company filing.
Tether stated in the filing that it "used cash from its own working capital" to fund the Adecoagro investment. The company now owns 10,048,249 shares of Adecoagro, equating to 9.8% of the "outstanding common shares."
Founded in 2002, Adecoagro is a major milk producer in Argentina, processing 550,000 liters daily at its Buenos Aires plant. The company also expanded into the sugar, ethanol, and energy sectors in Brazil in 2005.
Tether’s USDT remains the largest stablecoin, with a market capitalization exceeding $118 billion, according to CoinMarketCap data. Recently, Tether announced plans to launch a new stablecoin tied to the United Arab Emirates dirham (AED).
This stablecoin will be introduced in partnership with UAE-based Phoenix Group and Green Acorn Investments, aiming to create a digital version of the dirham backed by liquid UAE-based reserves.
Meanwhile, competition in the stablecoin market is growing, with new entrants such as PayPal’s US dollar-pegged stablecoin, PayPal USD, which has already reached over $1 billion in market capitalization.
Ripple Labs has also started testing its United States dollar-pegged stablecoin, Ripple USD (RLUSD), on both the XRP ledger and Ethereum mainnets, with plans to expand the fiat-backed token to additional blockchain networks in the future.
On August 26, the total market capitalization for stablecoins, excluding algorithmic ones, hit a record $168 billion.
The market had previously reached an all-time high of $167 billion in March 2022 before dropping to $135 billion by the end of that year.
Sources:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/tether-100-m-stake-adecoagro
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1499505/000110465924090580/tm2421820d1_sc13d.htm
