Author: Xiaobing, Deep Chao TechFlow
On May 25th, stablecoin issuer Tether announced a collaboration with the Georgian government to issue GEL₮, a stablecoin pegged to the Lari.
The press release is written conventionally: reducing costs, accelerating settlement, promoting cross-border payments. CEO Ardoino reiterated that phrase again, stablecoins are becoming the infrastructure of global finance.
Looking at this announcement within the context of Tether's actions over the past 24 months, what Tether is doing is gradually connecting the issuance interfaces and global distribution channels for the on-chain currencies of small nations, one by one, into its own hands.
Tether's Product Line is Essentially a Business Map for Issuing Currencies on Behalf of Others
Let's lay out Tether's cards: USDT, $189 billion market cap, number one globally, but not usable by US users; USAT, a US dollar stablecoin launched earlier this year for the GENIUS Act-compliant market, essentially a "US version" of USDT; EURT, a Euro stablecoin, forced to retreat by MiCA, will cease redemptions in November 2025; MXNT is for the Mexican Peso; CNHT is for offshore Chinese Yuan, its scale has remained small; GEL₮, the upcoming Lari stablecoin.
Viewed by currency, it seems messy, but the strategic intent is clear. Tether is testing one thing: Outside the main channel of the US dollar, can "issuing national currency stablecoins on behalf of sovereign states" become a replicable, standardized business?
USDT is responsible for holding the position of the global dollar shadow currency. USAT and EURT are attempts at compliance in heavily regulated markets. The common denominators for the rest—MXNT, CNHT, GEL₮—are clear: weak internationalization of the local currency, expensive cross-border payments, high reliance on remittances, but not so severe as to face outright sanctions like Iran or North Korea.
Georgia is the latest blueprint for this strategy.
Why Was Georgia Willing to Sign?
A population of 3.7 million, GDP around $35 billion, smaller than Kunming, but it has three conditions that make it particularly suitable.
It has a pain point. IMF data shows that over the past decade, remittances have accounted for about 15% of Georgia's GDP. For 40-45% of recipient households, monthly income comes from remittances, mainly from Russia, Greece, and the US. The cost and time delay per traditional wire transfer represent real money lost for these families. If an on-chain Lari can work, it's a true benefit for the common people.
The compliance framework is ready. The National Bank of Georgia spent years building a digital asset regulatory framework covering reserves, redemption rights, issuer supervision, AML, and proactively aligning with the US GENIUS Act. This step was intentional, aiming to position itself as a digital asset hub in the Caucasus region.
Preliminary groundwork was laid. Georgia signed an MOU with Tether in 2023, conducted a digital Lari pilot with Ripple the same year, and also signed a collaboration with Hedera. GEL₮ did not appear out of thin air.
The logic is clear: Use Tether's global distribution network in exchange for accelerated internationalization of its own currency.
Georgia could also issue a CBDC itself, but even a fast CBDC only circulates within its own system. By plugging into Tether's network, the Lari can, for the first time, be directly swapped with USDT and USDC in the same liquidity pool, and be held in any crypto wallet. This is equivalent to Georgia using its compliance framework as a bargaining chip to rent Tether's already-established global pipeline.
What Did Tether Gain?
Georgia is too small. The annual remittance market is less than $5 billion. Adding domestic payments, the stablecoin circulation would be at most a few tens of billions, a drop in the bucket compared to USDT's $189 billion.
So Tether's goal is not Georgia itself, but thetemplate.
Each additional country makes the solution of "issuing national currency stablecoins on behalf of sovereign states" more mature. Once the compliance architecture, reserve mechanism, and redemption process for GEL₮ are proven, the next interested country—Azerbaijan, Armenia, Uzbekistan, Kenya, Nigeria—can directly apply the template, compressing the timeline from years to months.
The real moat lies even deeper. When a country's national stablecoin is swapped within the same liquidity network as USDT, that country's currency is quietly connected to an informal dollar system anchored by USDT. Tether doesn't need to fight for decision-making power in these countries' central banks; it only needs to ensure it is the middle router.
The logic resembles London's financial export in the 19th century. London's banks didn't become central banks in colonies; they just layered their clearing, discount, and exchange systems abroad, and then everyone had to use London's rails. The difference is that was one-way colonialism, whereas now it's two-way voluntary.Small countries are happy to sign, unable to wait for SWIFT's transformation; Tether is happy to do it, locking in a key position in the next generation of financial infrastructure.
Outsourcing Sovereign Currency
The digital Euro has been tangled in public consultations for five years by MiCA, ECB, and various national central banks.
Georgia, a country with a GDP smaller than Kunming, bypassed the entire process of "a country issuing its own CBDC" with a contract with a private company, sending its national currency directly onto a global circulation track on par with USDT.
If this happens in ten or twenty small countries over the next three years, it will be the embryo of a new international financial order: the outsourcing of sovereign currency globalization to private stablecoin issuers.
But this path is not without cost.
First is monetary sovereignty risk. If the liquidity, wallet access, and transaction routing of a national stablecoin all depend on Tether, what happens to the visibility and control over currency circulation by the local central bank? There is no clear answer yet.
In the future, if half of Georgian households use GEL₮ to receive remittances, then any reserve crisis Tether faces will not only pressure Tether's balance sheet but also Georgia's social stability.
Second, if all small countries' national stablecoins ultimately enter and exit via swaps through USDT, then superficially it's national currencies going on-chain, but in reality, it might be these countries further connecting to an on-chain dollar system centered on USDT. For countries doing this in a de-dollarization context, this is a paradox worth considering in advance.
The BIS has repeatedly warned about the impact of private stablecoins on monetary sovereignty and financial stability over the past two years, not without reason.
Details of GEL₮'s issuance structure, reserve custodian, and technical chain selection have not been disclosed. These details determine whether it is a true "sovereign-backed stablecoin" or a "regular Tether product with a government name attached."
But there is an observation point more important than details: In the next 12 months, will a second or third country sign a similar template collaboration with Tether?
If so, Tether will transform from a stablecoin issuance company into a cross-sovereign financial infrastructure service provider that issues national currency stablecoins on behalf of sovereign states.
This is a species we haven't had a word for before. It's not a bank, not a central bank, not a payments company, nor an ordinary stablecoin issuer. It's a cross-sovereign, on-chain currency-issuing organization pieced together by regulatory arbitrage, network effects, and technical standardization.
Looking back in three years, the contract signed on May 25, 2026, might be more important than any other crypto news from that week.
