Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino has revealed that an astonishing 40% of all fees paid by users on the major blockchains are spent on moving USDT. USDT Transfers Account for a Significant Portion of Network Fees In a recent post on X, Paolo Ardoino shared the latest data highlighting USDT’s share of transfer fees across major blockchains. Here, transfer fees refer to the amounts senders must pay with their network transactions as rewards to validators. The chart Ardoino shared illustrates the trend in the percentage of these transfer fees paid by users on major networks for USDT transfers. The 7-day moving average of this metric has risen in recent months | Source: @paoloardoino on X The data covers nine networks: Ethereum, Tron, Toncoin, Solana, BSC, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Polygon, and Optimism. The graph clearly indicates that the 7-day moving average of USDT transfer fees on these blockchains recently reached 40%. Since fees correlate with transaction activity, this high percentage points to strong user demand for Tether’s stablecoin.

Ardoino notes, “Hundreds of millions of people in emerging markets use Tether’s digital dollar USDT daily to protect their families from inflation and currency devaluation. ” Typically, transfer fees are paid in the native tokens of each blockchain, even when moving secondary coins—for example, ETH is required for any transaction on Ethereum. As stablecoins like USDT operate on these blockchains, users must also hold the native cryptocurrency to make transfers. However, there is one exception among the networks in the data: Tron. Earlier this year, Tron introduced a feature permitting users to pay gas fees using other tokens, including USDT. Consequently, Tron has become the dominant network for supplying the leading stablecoin. “Blockchains focusing on lower gas fees and allowing payments in USDT will dominate globally, ” says Ardoino. In related developments, on-chain volume for all stablecoins recently hit a new record, as institutional DeFi solutions provider Sentora highlighted in a post on X. The following chart shows the transaction volume trends of various stablecoins | Source: Sentora on X As shown, combined monthly transaction volume across stablecoins surpassed $1. 5 trillion last month, marking an all-time high (ATH). ETH Price At the time of writing, Ethereum trades around $3, 600, down more than 4% over the past week. The coin’s price seems to have recovered somewhat from its recent low | Source: ETHUSDT on TradingView Featured image from Dall-E, chart from TradingView. com