USA₮, the dollar-backed stablecoin issued by Anchorage Digital Bank and backed by Tether, is Expansion to Cielowhich is the first blockchain deployment outside of Ethereum.
The move places the regulated token on a network that has become one of the most active paths to use of stablecoins in the real world.
Tether introduced the token in January as a US-regulated product issued through Anchorage Digital Bank under federal OCC oversight, positioning it as a domestic complement to USD₮ rather than a replacement for its main offshore stablecoin. The project was created to comply with the GENIUS Act and targets US users with a more regulated structure.
Celo gives USA₮ instant access to a distribution network that seems already designed for stablecoin payments. Opera said this month that MiniPay, its autonomous wallet on Celo, has grown to more than 14 million account registrations and processed more than 420 million transactions across more than 66 countries.
Opera and Celo also said the network now has more than 4.23 million weekly active users in USD₮, underscoring how central stablecoins have become for on-chain activity.
This helps explain why Celo was chosen as the first expansion series. The network has pivoted to payments with features like fee stripping, which allows users to pay gas with stablecoins instead of native tokens, along with a mobile-first design geared toward cheap and simple transfers. Celo describes itself as a layer 2 Ethereum focused on fast, low-cost payments and real-world adoption.
Google Cloud is also part of the rollout, adding a broader infrastructure layer to the launch. The company is expanding further into digital assets and payments infrastructure with products like Universal Ledger, which it says are designed for programmable transfers and compliance-focused financial applications. In this case, USA₮ connects that infrastructure to a distribution model that preserves privacy and demonstrates humanity through Self.
