99.2% of USDT0 Holders Have Less Than $1,000, Data Shows

Retail Dominance in USDT0 Holdings

UST0, the omni-chain token backed 1:1 by Tether’s (USDT) stablecoin, published data indicating that small holders drive the majority of its activity. According to data shared with The Block, 99.2% of all USDT0 holders have wallets with less than $1,000, while about 1,200 have wallets holding between $100,000 and $1 million, and just 35 wallets exceed $10 million.

“USDT0’s active user demographics show that the strongest engagement has come from modest, everyday holders making retail-scale transactions, rather than whales moving large balances,” the USDT0 team wrote in a report. “This challenges the crypto industry’s growing institutional bias without undermining institutional opportunities to participate in this growing ecosystem.”

UST0 was created by Everdawn Labs with support from cross-chain infrastructure provider LayerZero and Tether. Launched at the beginning of 2025, the network has processed $86.7 billion in lifetime volume and has extended its multi-chain version of USDT to 23 blockchains, including most recently the Tempo network built by Stripe and Paradigm. The protocol itself is now the third-largest holder of USDT — its backing asset — behind Binance and OKX, according to USDT0 co-creator Lorenzo Romagnoli.

Primary Use Cases: DeFi and Cross-Chain Movement

According to the USDT0 team report, users appear to use USDT0 primarily for DeFi, with perps DEX and derivatives trading representing “the strongest category growth in recent months.” Derivative volume using USDT0 hit $80 million in April.

The asset is also used to move capital between networks. While only 1.8% of cross-chain transactions during a recent seven-day period were for transfers above $1 million, those accounted for 68.8% of total transaction volume. “The significant gap between the mean and median USDT0 bridge amount ($90.1k vs. $902, respectively) reinforces the idea that while the majority of users are moving smaller amounts, large transfers remain critical in driving total capital movement across USDT0,” the team wrote.

Notably, 70% of these bridge transfers came from “returning users.” With about a $4 billion circulating supply and nearly $90 billion in lifetime volume, USDT0 has seen its entire supply turn over roughly 21.7 times. “By that measure, USDT0 is one of the hardest-working assets in onchain finance,” the team wrote.

2025 Expansion and Operational Model

Romagnoli noted the Everdawn team is focused on expanding USDT0’s usability. “We’re focused on curating each of those ecosystems that we have deployed on, working better with their ecosystem teams, DeFi teams, and creating better railways to onboard and offboard USDT0. That obviously includes better native deployments,” Romagnoli told The Block. “We like to work with everyone. And so far, everyone has liked to work with us, because we basically made a product that is fully free to use.”

UST0 does not share in the profit earned by Tether on USDT’s backing assets, which are dominated by U.S. Treasuries. “Our main goal has never been and will never be revenues. Our main goal is removing friction and unifying liquidity. We are lucky enough to run on a very lean team,” Romagnoli said, noting the team often works with a network’s ecosystem team to “cover our operational expenses” when expanding to new protocols.

“It’s been very humbling,” Romagnoli said, discussing USDT0’s uptake in its first year. “When we launched this thing, we knew that we were leveraging up a big inefficiency, but we did not expect the wider community to rely so much on us right from the get-go.”