Coinbase Pro announces support for Tether's Ethereum-based USDT stablecoin

Coinbase announced late Thursday that its Coinbase Pro trading platform is adding support for Tether's USDT, dollar-tied stablecoin.

Specifically, Coinbase's professional trading platform will list ERC-20 based USDT, though the stablecoin operates on other blockchain networks as well, including Tron. In a blog post explaining the move, Coinbase said that "[s]upport for USDT will generally be available in Coinbase’s supported jurisdictions, with the exception of New York State. Trading will begin on or after 6PM Pacific Time (PT) Monday April 26, if liquidity conditions are met. Please note that Coinbase only supports ERC-20 USDT running on the Ethereum blockchain."

The development comes just over a week after Coinbase's direct listing on the Nasdaq stock exchange. What's more, Coinbase Pro's addition of USDT comes just shy of two months after Tether, the operator of USDT, settled with New York's Attorney General following a years-long investigation that began in 2019. As part of that settlement, Tether and crypto exchange Bitfinex agreed to pay $18.5 million, and Tether will submit quarterly documentation to the NYAG regarding USDT's reserves backing.

Coinbase in its blog post that should enough liquidity be obtained, Pro will support a series of trading pairs for USDT.

"Once sufficient supply of USDT is established on the platform, trading on our BTC-USDT, ETH-USDT, USDT-EUR, USDT-GBP, USDT-USD and USDT-USDC, order books will launch in three phases, post-only, limit-only and full trading," the firm said. "If at any point one of the new order books does not meet our assessment for a healthy and orderly market, we may keep the book in one state for a longer period of time or suspend trading as per our Trading Rules."

Coinbase further noted that "USDT is not yet available on Coinbase.com or via our Consumer mobile apps. We will make a separate announcement if and when this support is added."