Tether Launches New U.S.-Regulated Stablecoin USAT, Cboe to Launch Perpetual Swaps, and CFTC Explores MiCA Passporting (#224 – 14 Sept 2025)

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1. Tether Unveils its U.S. Regulated Stablecoin: USAT

Tether, the issuer of the world’s largest stablecoin USDT, announced that it is launching a U.S. regulated dollar-backed stablecoin called USAT.

Tether also appointed Bo Hines, who was until last month the executive director of President Trump’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets, as its CEO.

This is a smart move from Tether as it enables the firm to keep its large and very profitable USDT stablecoin business global, but also to have a separate U.S. regulated version to cater to the U.S. market and to U.S. policymakers.

Whether USAT will be successful or not is probably irrelevant for Tether. This is the playbook we should expect to see most other large crypto firms follow over the coming months: keep growing their profitable global business separately and set up a U.S. version for the U.S. market.https://giphy.com/henri_arslanian

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2. Cboe to Launch Perpetual Swaps

Chicago’s Cboe is looking at launching Bitcoin and Ethereum perpetual swap contracts which it calls “continuous futures”.

Similar to traditional financial markets, derivatives are much bigger than spot markets in crypto, with derivatives representing over 75% of all crypto trading volumes.

The most traded derivative instruments are perpetual swaps. You can watch my educational segment on perps here. Unlike traditional calendar futures that have quarterly expiries and need to be “rolled over”, such perpetual swaps (commonly referred to as “perps”) don’t settle (thus the name perpetual) and offer significant leverage, often up to 100x.

The Cboe continuous futures are planned to be structured as long-dated contracts with a 10-year expiration and will be cash-settled along with a transparent and funding-rate methodology.

Having traditional exchanges like the Cboe (and the Singapore exchange earlier this year) announcing they want to copy this crypto exchange product is not a surprise.

The big question is whether investors will want to trade such instruments on these venues and whether such exchanges, that are used to operate 5 days a week with fixed opening hours, can handle an asset class that is truly 24/7 and global.

Time will tell!

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3. CFTC to “Explore” Allowing MiCA-Authorized Platforms to Serve U.S. Markets

Acting CFTC Chairperson Caroline Pham mentioned that the CFTC will explore whether trading platforms authorized under the MiCA regulations in Europe can qualify under the CFTC frameworks.

Passporting of regulatory licenses has been discussed for many years, not only in crypto but also in traditional finance.

And whilst there are clear benefits to having such passporting in place, having such arrangements in effect is very difficult, due to the unique requirements of each regulator and jurisdiction.

Whilst this is a great initiative and one that should be welcomed, I am not very optimistic that it will happen. If we cannot have passporting in traditional finance with assets and risks that are familiar, it’s unlikely (unfortunately) that we will have it in crypto, at least not in the short term.

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See you all next week!!

Henri Arslanian

*Please note that this newsletter reflects Henri’s personal views and not those of any organisation he is involved with. This newsletter is for educational purposes only, and none of its content should be construed as investment or financial advice of any kind.