In a rather surprising turn of events, the OMNI team announced USDT will be issued on Litecoin. Although USDT is available already, choosing Litecoin makes a lot more sense for Tether. Considering how the LTC network has SegWit activated and is capable of scaling, it will be an interesting experiment. A lot of the details have still to be released, but it makes a lot of sense.
To put this news into perspective, Tether has been issuing USDT tokens for some time now. They do so using the OMNI layer Right now, all USDT in circulation are issued on Omni on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. However, with scalability issues in mind, a better solution needs to be found. The team has been looking into different solutions, including the Litecoin network. More specifically, there will be a new Omni layer on top of the Litecoin network moving forward.
Tether Picks Litecoin To Issue USDT Tokens
With this new layer being created, Tether can issue USDT on the Litecoin blockchain. Considering how the LTC network can scale a lot better than Bitcoin right now, this seems to be a solid choice. It is unclear when this process will start exactly, though. There are still a lot of details which need to be worked out moving forward. It is obvious why the team chose the LTC network, though. There is also the potential chain split for Bitcoin, which may occur at the end of July.
“Tether will be issuing USDT on Omni on Litecoin ?”
Using @Tether_to on Litecoin makes a lot of sense! @Omni_Layerhttps://t.co/s4BTj7YAIM
— Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) June 25, 2017
From the information we have received, some things are confirmed already. users will be able to convert USD to USDT and vice versa using the Litecoin-enabled layer. Exchanges supporting USDT are ready to embrace this new solution as well. It remains to be seen if this is a permanent switch from Bitcoin to Litecoin, though. From a scaling perspective, the decision by Tether makes a lot of sense. This also goes to show Litecoin can be used for a lot more than just the LTC currency.
All things considered, this is very good news for LTC. It remains to be seen how this news will impact the network, though. Network blocks have plenty of room to spare right now. Then again, it is possible this news will send the value of LTC upward as well. With Bitcoin going very bearish once again, anything can happen in the coming weeks. It is an interesting decision by Tether, that much is evident. It is also interesting they didn’t choose Ethereum. That is only normal, as that network is incapable of scaling in its current form.
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