The symbols of bitcoin and the stablecoin Tether (USDT) are displayed at a cryptocurrency store in Hong Kong on July 29, 2025.
AFP via Getty Images
On March 21, Tether completed a 14-month integration to bring USDT back to Bitcoin via the Lightning Network’s Taproot Assets protocol. It was a quiet milestone for a $184 billion asset that was born on Bitcoin’s Omni layer in 2014 before migrating to Ethereum, Tron, and a growing list of alternative chains.
But the go-live was only the first step. Over the past three months, Tether has poured more than $20 million into three Bitcoin infrastructure startups: Speed ($8 million), Ark Labs ($5.2 million), and Utexo ($7.5 million). Each is building a different piece of what these companies describe as the plumbing needed to make Bitcoin a serious settlement network for dollar payments.
I spoke with executives at three companies working on this infrastructure. None speak for Tether directly, but what they describe, independently, is a coordinated push to turn Bitcoin into a stablecoin settlement layer using Lightning’s speed and a new generation of Bitcoin-native protocols.
Lightning’s quiet growth
The Lightning Network has grown far more than most observers realize.
A recent report from River, compiled with data from roughly half the known Lightning providers, found the network crossed $1 billion in monthly transactions in November 2025, processing 5.2 million payments with an average size of $223. Jesse Shrader, CEO of Amboss Technologies, projects that to roughly $15 billion annually.
Bobby Schell, VP of Marketing at Voltage, says his company alone processes about 25% of all Lightning payments. He described an iGaming company running a pilot through Voltage that sent 87 bitcoin in under a month, with only 5% to 7% of its customers enabled. In Africa, an exchange called Chipper Cash integrated Lightning over a weekend and saw half of all Bitcoin transactions migrate to the layer 2 with no marketing at all.
Cash App has also integrated Lightning across all Square terminals, according to Schell. At the 2025 Bitcoin conference, the company disclosed that it earns 9.75% yield on its Lightning node by providing liquidity to the network.
But Lightning has a measurement problem. The network is private by design.
“It is incredibly opaque, which is an advantage when it comes to stablecoin payments,” Shrader said. “People aren’t able to track exactly how much payments are happening on Lightning.”
Why dollar payments change everything
For all its growth, Lightning has been limited to moving one asset: bitcoin. For most businesses, that is a problem.
“Stablecoins have found product market fit,” Schell acknowledged. “The dollar has global product market fit and stablecoins are the best instance in how to send dollars.”
Stablecoin transaction volume crossed $33 trillion in the past year, dwarfing Lightning’s Bitcoin volumes. The total stablecoin market recently hit $316 billion, with Tether commanding 58% of it. The gap between Lightning’s payment technology and the assets businesses actually want to move has been the main barrier. With USDT now live on Taproot Assets, the companies building around it say that barrier is falling.
Shrader puts it in competitive terms. Tron, which currently handles the majority of USDT transfers, charges between $1 and $4 per transaction and serves what he estimates is a $20 trillion annual market. Lightning settles instantly at near-zero cost.
“You’re telling me that we’re going to be stuck with our typical payment processors that are charging 3% to 4% and doing two-week settlement times,” Shrader said, “instead of moving to more efficient technology that does instant settlement?”
Three approaches, one goal
What makes this moment different from previous false starts is that multiple companies are building complementary infrastructure simultaneously.
Voltage is building enterprise plumbing. The company offers a credit product that lets businesses send payments over Bitcoin rails while settling in dollars, meaning the business never touches bitcoin or experiences volatility. Schell says the Lightning Network with Taproot Assets functions as a foreign exchange layer, swapping between bitcoin and stablecoins natively within the protocol.
“Our line of credit product enables businesses to send over the Bitcoin rail,” Schell said. “You never touch Bitcoin, never experience volatility. But if you’re a Bitcoin-native business, great. Send and receive Bitcoin, settle in Bitcoin. Businesses now have optionality.”
Schell confirmed Voltage has “direct relationships” with the stablecoin issuers and is coordinating on rollout strategy.
Amboss Technologies is taking a novel approach. The company’s RailsX product will enable cross-currency payments on Lightning. Initially it will use wrapped stablecoins to demonstrate demand. Shrader describes the end state as Lightning becoming a decentralized exchange where users deploying bitcoin and stablecoin liquidity become automated market makers.
“This is going to be the first DEX without needing to create a separate token other than Bitcoin,” Shrader said. “Bitcoin is the native token of this DEX.”
Ark Labs, which received $5.2 million from Tether in March, is building a different kind of Bitcoin layer 2. Rather than relying on Lightning’s channel-based architecture, Ark Labs uses what founder Marco Argentieri calls “virtual transactions”: pre-signed Bitcoin transactions that execute off-chain but can be published to the main blockchain if needed.
Argentieri’s argument is that Lightning handles payments well but lacks the programmability needed for capital markets: escrow, authorization holds, lending, derivatives. Ark Labs aims to provide that programmability while remaining Bitcoin-native, meaning users retain the ability to exit without permission from any third party.
“The early builders in Bitcoin were very ideological,” Argentieri said. “If everything wasn’t trustless as Bitcoin, then it’s not going to be built. I think that has been the biggest problem.”
His more contrarian take: native Tether issuance on Bitcoin matters less than USDT0, Tether’s cross-chain bridging protocol. If Ark Labs supports USDT0, wallets built on its infrastructure could receive stablecoins from any chain and settle on Bitcoin rails, without users knowing or caring which network is involved.
Why now, after twelve years?
Part of the answer is capital. Investment in Bitcoin-focused infrastructure historically lagged behind funding for Ethereum and Solana projects. That has shifted. Tether’s $20 million across three companies in three months signals the opportunity is being taken seriously by the industry’s largest player.
Part of it is institutional validation. Bitcoin is now held on corporate balance sheets and traded through regulated ETFs. The same institutions that trust Bitcoin as a store of value are asking whether they can build financial infrastructure on top of it. Argentieri noted that Bitcoin Treasury companies, a category that barely existed two years ago, need infrastructure their boards can understand.
“You cannot really explain zero-knowledge proofs to a senior board,” Argentieri said. “But you can explain what a pre-signed transaction is and where the risk lies.”
And part of it is competitive pressure. Tron charges $1 to $4 per USDT transaction. Traditional processors take 3% to 4% with multi-day settlement. Lightning’s near-zero fees and instant finality are a clear technical advantage, now that the dollar-denominated assets are available.
As Argentieri put it, Tether was born on Bitcoin, left for cheaper blockchains, and now powers much of crypto’s financial infrastructure. “The biggest problem,” he said, “was the plumbing was missing.”
USDT is back on Bitcoin. Whether the plumbing built around it can compete with Tron’s entrenched network effects will determine whether this homecoming amounts to more than symbolism.