Tether launches wallet
Tether rolled out a self‑custodial wallet aimed at global users, while Ostium launched an on‑chain platform enabling perpetuals tied to stocks, commodities and forex—reports said traditional open interest still dominates at about 87%. The social posts described Tether’s wallet release and Ostium’s product positioning in derivatives markets ( ).
Tether said Tuesday it launched tether.wallet, a self-custodial app that lets users hold and send Tether tokens, gold tokens and Bitcoin themselves. (tether.io) Tether said the wallet supports USD₮, USA₮, XAU₮ and Bitcoin across multiple networks, and uses human-readable handles in the format “name@tether.me” instead of long wallet addresses. The company also said users can pay network fees in the asset they are sending, rather than keeping a separate gas token. (tether.io) In self-custody, the user keeps the private keys, which function like the password that unlocks the funds. Tether said transaction signing happens locally on the device and recovery phrases remain under the user’s control. (tether.io) The launch extends a wallet push Tether had already been making through its Wallet Development Kit, or WDK, which it released as open-source infrastructure in November 2025. In February 2026, Tether said Whop would use WDK for payments, and in January 2026 it launched a self-custodial Rumble Wallet with Rumble. (tether.io, tether.io, tether.io) A separate push is happening in trading markets that sit on blockchains rather than broker platforms. Ostium said its platform offers perpetual contracts tied to foreign exchange, commodities and indices, letting traders post stablecoins from their own wallets instead of opening a conventional brokerage account. (ostium.io, ostium.io) A perpetual contract is a derivative with no expiry date, and its price is kept near the underlying market through periodic funding payments between traders. Ostium said assets including gold, oil, natural gas, the Nikkei 225 and Group of Ten foreign-exchange pairs are available on its platform. (ostium.io, ostium.io, ostium.io) Most derivatives risk still sits in traditional venues. The Bank for International Settlements says its derivatives statistics track organized exchanges and over-the-counter markets globally, while Intercontinental Exchange reported record open interest of 100 million contracts across its futures and options markets in February 2025. (bis.org, ir.theice.com) Crypto derivatives are large in their own market but remain separate from the biggest traditional pools of futures and options liquidity. CoinDesk reported $5.98 trillion in crypto derivatives volume in September 2025, while CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange continue to publish daily and quarterly open-interest data across rates, commodities and other contracts. (coindesk.com, cmegroup.com, ir.theice.com) Taken together, the two launches point at the same target: putting more payments and trading activity into apps that users control directly with a wallet. Tether is starting with money storage and transfers, while Ostium is using the same wallet-based model for leveraged bets on currencies, commodities and stock indexes. (tether.io, ostium.io)
