February 18, 2026

Capitalizations Index – B ∞/21M

New Ways to Control Your Crypto 🚀

Blockchain Blog
New Ways to Control Your Crypto 🚀

We built the Blockchain Wallet because we’re driven by a relentless passion for making crypto easy to use. We want everyone to be able to use it, not just invest in it.

We believe that owning and controlling your own private key is the single most important aspect of using crypto. Without a private key, you aren’t using crypto – you’re just speculating and you’re missing the defining part of crypto: user controlled, sovereign money.

It was enabling that exact need that underpinned the development of the Blockchain Wallet six years ago. The mission? Make it easy for every user to have their own private key, to get users away from storing funds at exchanges and “bitcoin banks”, and to enable everyone to be their own bank.

Fast forward six years and we’ve achieved a few things that we’re proud of:

Building the first cross-platform, non-custodial, and cross-chain wallet
Signing up 30 million wallets in 140 countries globally
Powering over $200 billion in consumer transaction volume and over 80 million consumer crypto transactions in the last two years alone
Championing the cause of financial sovereignty and user-control with regulators around the world. (We’ve spent thousands of hours and millions on education and outreach.)
Helping our users store millions of BTC, BCH & ETH coins and generate over a quarter of bitcoin network traffic alone

Most importantly, it’s been a honor and privilege to be the first place tens of millions of people turn in order to actually use crypto and hold their own keys.

But there’s a lot still to do.

At the end of the last bull run, we did a serious self-assessment and asked ourselves, what do users need that we aren’t delivering today? We identified four common requests and frustrations:

Better, faster ways for new users get their first crypto and make their first transaction
More storage types, like hardware, as users’ balances increased
More assets as users want to store and use an increasingly diverse asset set
Better, more reliable sources of liquidity as trading and investing across assets continues to increase

Satisfying these demands meant building a huge extension of our platform, at scale. We’ve had our heads down much of this year doing exactly that and starting today we’re excited to begin delivering new solutions to you, beginning with two new capabilities.

First, we’re launching Swap by Blockchain: a next generation trading product with best-in-class liquidity and execution, powered by our new machine trading software platform that ensures best execution across assets. Blockchain Wallet users will now have access to exchange-like prices without giving up control of their keys or their crypto. And trade limits will increase from hundreds to thousands of dollars of crypto per trade.

While the system currently has deep liquidity drawn from a variety of sources, we plan to add more liquidity sources over time, including decentralized exchange protocols. We’ve rebuilt our risk and KYC systems, so that you can onboard with ease, in minutes. Swap ensures our users stay liquid and can trade at the best prices in the market, regardless of overall market volatility and challenges. We’ve started rolling Swap out today and everyone will have access over the next two weeks.

Secondly, we’re launching Lockbox: a hardware vault in your pocket, built in partnership with hardware leader Ledger. Lockbox is simple to use and is even more secure thanks to a locked endpoint that prevents phishing and spoofing attacks. It’s hardware made easy, with a setup that takes just a few moments thanks to our custom hardware-software integration.

With Lockbox you’re able to check your balance and receive transactions, on mobile and web, without the inconvenience of having to plug your device in every time. In an industry first, you’ll also be able to trade directly from your Lockbox while still maintaining your keys. In conjunction with Lockbox, we’re also excited to let current Ledger device owners seamlessly pair with the Blockchain Wallet and trade directly from the Ledger device they already own.

And we have more coming this year, including additional assets and new products within the Blockchain Wallet that will bring you new, faster, and better ways to get started in crypto.

We’re here to build a new financial system and the Blockchain Wallet is your passport to that new world. Store crypto, trade crypto, transact with crypto and most importantly truly own and control your crypto.

We’re dedicated to building the functionality you want, without compromising your control of your key. Your crypto is yours, and it should stay that way.

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Dammit Tether, You Had One Job!

Tether (USDT), the cryptocurrency price stable asset, has lost its peg to the U.S.Dollar, which has everyone asking: is Tether in trouble?


Tether, are you solvent?

Tether is a cryptocurrency project focused on providing price stable assets on the bitcoin blockchain that are pegged to the value of and backed by national currencies. However, their peg seems to have become ineffective as market forces are now pushing the price down.

The price of USDT is currently sitting at $0.91 USD, which has resulted in bitcoin trading at a premium on some of the exchanges that use USDT like Bitfinex and Poloniex.

While this may seem like a great arbitrage opportunity at first, allowing users to purchase BTC with USD and sell it for USDT at a profit, some users are beginning to question Tether Limited’s business model and their capabilities to cover the 1:1 USD peg.

One Reddit user and cryptocurrency trader since 2013 has expressed his concerns regarding Tether and the current price discrepancies:

The problem here is that this is creating a very large price spread between exchanges that quote ACTUAL dollars and those that quote tether. This distinction is not being made clear, which I think is having an unhealthy influence on price rallies in cryptocurrencies. Furthermore, I have doubts that this tether is backed by dollars at all and in all likelihood is a fractional reserve.

Meanwhile, others have also pointed to Tether’s legal page noting one particular sentence that has aroused some suspicion:

There is no contractual right or other right or legal claim against us to redeem or exchange your Tethers for money. We do not guarantee any right of redemption or exchange of Tethers by us for money. There is no guarantee against losses when you buy, trade, sell, or redeem Tethers.

So What’s Going on with Tether?

As many may know, Bitfinex has had some issues with the Wells Fargo bank, which has limited their wire transfer capabilities. At the time, both deposits and withdrawals are not being processed by the exchange.

This problem also extends to Tether Limited, the company that issues the USDT and EURT cryptocurrencies. Tether has addressed this issue in a recent announcement which reads:

Since April 18, 2017, all incoming international wires to Tether have been blocked and refused by our Taiwanese banks. As such, we do not expect the supply of tethers to increase substantially until these constraints have been lifted.

According to the blog post, the company is currently in the process of establishing new banking corridors, which will allow them to resume withdrawals and deposits. The announcement also mentions that no new USDT have been issued and that Tether continues to maintain a 1:1 backing of real-life fiat.

One of the co-founders of Tether has also taken to twitter stating that “there is no way that Tether can run a fractional reserve.”

Why is the USD Peg Not Working?

So, if the USDT has kept its 1:1 USD backing, why is the 1:1 peg not working? The answer seems to lie both with the lack of liquidity created by the wire transfer limitations and the panic generated by the recent news and rumors.

Users that are in a hurry to receive their USD holdings may prefer to sell USDT at a loss than wait. Not only that, but the cryptocurrency community has also “learned its lesson” from the Mt. Gox disaster.

Thus, it’s no wonder that some are interpreting the current USDT limitations as sign to exit by selling their their tokens as quickly as possible for an asset they can easily withdraw and liquidate like bitcoin. In fact, many believe this is one of the major reasons driving the BTC price towards $1,300 at the moment.

In other words, USDT holders that may be interpreting this as a sign of insolvency or outright scam would rather sell at a loss than take the risk of their holdings become worthless.

Still, it is unclear if Tether’s problems are indeed limited to their banking partners or if there are any other unknown issues. If Tether is able to restore its fiat withdrawals/deposits however, then the price should recover back to the normal $1.00.

Do you think USDT will be able to recover back to $1? Could there be any hidden issues with Tether? Share your opinion in the comment section!


Images courtesy of CoinMarketcap, Shutterstock, Tether.to

The post Dammit Tether, You Had One Job! appeared first on Bitcoinist.com.

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