Daily Crypto Deep Dive: Tether Is #3 in Crypto — So How Do You Actually Get Rich From USDT?

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Welcome back to the Daily Crypto Deep Dive. Tonight we're looking at one of the strangest investments in the entire cryptocurrency market, Tether. USDT is currently the third largest cryptocurrency in the world. According to CoinGecko, there are roughly 180 billion USDT in circulation, giving Tether a market capitalization of around $184 billion.

That's bigger than XRP, bigger than BNB, bigger than Solana, bigger than virtually every cryptocurrency on earth other than Bitcoin and Ethereum. But here's the ridiculous part. You can buy Tether today for $1.

You can come back in 5 years, and if everything has worked exactly as intended, your Tether will still be worth $1.

So what exactly is the point? And more importantly, if Tether has become one of the biggest financial machines in crypto, how do people actually get rich from it? Because somebody certainly is. And by the end of this episode, you'll understand where the billions actually come from, why simply buying USDT won't make you rich, and the different ways investors attempt to turn stable coins into an income-producing asset. Before we get into it, Kraken is the exchange we use and trust ourselves. If you're looking for a crypto exchange, using our Kraken link helps support Crypto News Today and allows us to keep the podcast ad-free.

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Let's start with the most important thing. You do not become rich because the price of USDT goes up. That isn't supposed to happen. One USDT is designed to maintain a value of approximately one US dollar. If you spend $10,000 buying Bitcoin, you're hoping Bitcoin eventually becomes considerably more valuable. If you spend $10,000 buying USDT, your objective is completely different. Your 10,000 USDT should still represent approximately $10,000.

If USDT suddenly traded at $2, that wouldn't be an incredible bull run. It would mean something had gone badly wrong with the stablecoin. So why is Tether worth almost $184 billion? Because market capitalization works slightly differently here. Approximately $180 billion USDT exist, and each is worth approximately $1.

Multiply the two together and you arrive at that enormous market cap. But this is where the story gets really interesting. Tether the company and USDT the token are two different things economically. Imagine I give Tether $1,000.

Tether issues me $1,000 USDT. I now have something designed to be redeemable for roughly the same $1,000 of value. But Tether now has assets backing that obligation. It doesn't simply need to leave mountains of physical dollar notes sitting inside a vault gathering dust.

Tether holds an enormous reserve portfolio, including huge quantities of short-term US government debt and repurchase agreements.

At the end of June 2026, Tether reported total assets of approximately $187.75 billion against liabilities of roughly $183.64 billion, leaving an excess reserve buffer of approximately $4.11 billion.

And those assets can earn money. That is the secret. Think about a US. Treasury bill. It doesn't need to double in value. The American government pays interest to whoever owns it. When you've got $1,000 earning interest, it's not particularly exciting. When you've got more than $100 billion earning interest, it's a completely different story. Tether reported more than $10 billion of profit during 2025 At the end of that year, its total direct and indirect exposure to US. Treasuries exceeded $141 billion.

Then, in the second quarter of 2026 alone, Tether said its net operating profit was approximately $1.5 billion, led primarily by Treasury and repo income. That's the part I think people completely misunderstand about Tether. Tether doesn't need USDT to rise in price to make billions. In fact, Tether desperately needs the opposite. Its entire empire depends on everyone believing that one USDT is worth $1.

The more people want USDT, the larger the reserve pool potentially becomes. The larger that reserve pool becomes, the more income those reserve assets can potentially generate. It's almost beautiful in its simplicity. And this brings us to the question everybody listening actually wants answered. How can you make money from USDT? Because simply buying it isn't enough. Let's imagine you buy $10,000 worth of USDT and put it into a wallet. One year passes, you've still got approximately $10,000.

Tether may have earned income from the assets backing the tokens, but Tether does not automatically pass that Treasury income on to you. That's absolutely crucial. USDT itself does not pay interest simply because you hold it. If you want your stablecoins to generate a return, you've got to put them to work. The first method is lending. This is one of the oldest concepts in finance. Someone wants money. You have money. They pay you for allowing them to use yours. In crypto, platforms such as Aave have created markets where stablecoins can be supplied by lenders and borrowed by other users. The borrower pays interest. Part of that economic return flows to the supplier. The exact yield continually changes according to supply and demand. And here's a useful insight into how valuable dollar liquidity can become. An Aave proposal published this month for its new institutional lending business described potential institutional borrowers paying around 6% to 8% APR against funding costs of roughly 4.5%.