Tether and Fasanara Capital have launched a private credit fund backed by 400 million USD from the two firms that aims to raise as much as 3 billion USD from institutional investors, in one of the clearest signals yet that stablecoin issuers intend to become full-stack credit intermediaries.
The evergreen fund, called StableFund, will use Tether’s USDT as settlement infrastructure for short-duration, asset-backed lending to businesses and consumers through fintech platforms in more than 60 countries, the companies announced Wednesday.
Fasanara will manage the fund’s investments, while Tether will source USDT-linked financing opportunities and provide the infrastructure for moving funds on- and offchain. The fund will focus on small and medium-sized businesses and consumer lending, including trade receivables and supply chain finance.
Real-economy lending on stablecoin rails
Fasanara, a London-based asset manager with more than 6 billion USD under management, will deploy the capital through its network of fintech lenders. The structure turns USDT from a trading and transfer instrument into the settlement layer for everyday credit, extending from trade receivables in emerging markets to supply chain finance for mid-sized firms.
The pitch to institutional investors is straightforward: short-duration, asset-backed lending denominated and settled in the world’s most widely circulated stablecoin, with an evergreen structure that avoids the fundraising cycles of traditional private credit vehicles.
For Tether, the fund is the latest step in a broader transformation from stablecoin issuer to diversified financial group. The company generated about 1.5 billion USD in net operating profit in the second quarter, largely from its US Treasury and repo holdings, and reported 187.8 billion USD in assets and a 4.11 billion USD reserve buffer at the end of June.
Tether’s capital goes to work
That profitability has increasingly been deployed beyond the core stablecoin business. Tether has invested 20 million USD in Argentine neobank Ualá, backed Brazilian exchange Mercado Bitcoin to expand tokenized finance in Latin America, taken a stake in Italian football club Juventus, and led a 50 million USD funding round for AI sleep technology company Eight Sleep in March.
The Fasanara partnership is different in kind. Equity investments diversify the balance sheet, but StableFund puts Tether’s settlement infrastructure at the center of a lending machine targeting 3 billion USD. Every dollar of credit originated through the fund reinforces demand for USDT as the working medium, tightening the loop between Tether’s treasury income and its circulation growth.
Competition in stablecoin-enabled credit
The move comes as tokenized credit and onchain private lending become one of the fastest-growing corners of real-world asset finance. Onchain private credit funds hold billions of USD in active loans, and institutional infrastructures from figure-to-fintech lending platforms have normalized blockchain-settled credit for asset managers.
Tether and Fasanara are betting that stablecoin-native credit can undercut traditional cross-border lending on speed and cost, particularly in the more than 60 countries where fintech lenders already originate but where dollar settlement through correspondent banks remains slow and expensive.
The timing also reflects competitive pressure. Circle’s USDC has entrenched itself in regulated institutional flows, PayPal launched PYUSDx this month for business issuers, and Fidelity is pushing its own FIDD stablecoin into on-chain finance. StableFund gives USDT a use case that competitors cannot easily replicate: a captive credit fund settlement layer spanning both onchain and offchain movement of funds.
Risks and open questions
The fund’s success is not guaranteed. Private credit has faced rising scrutiny as borrowing costs climbed, and short-duration, asset-backed lending through fintech platforms carries its own credit cycle risks. The structure also deepens the interdependence between Tether’s reserves and the performance of real-economy lending, a nexus regulators have yet to fully examine.
Still, a 3 billion USD target backed by 400 million USD of sponsor capital is a serious commitment, and Fasanara’s existing fintech lending network provides immediate deployment capacity rather than a promise of future pipelines.
For decentralized finance watchers, the signal is that the largest stablecoin issuer now has a direct financial stake in credit demand for its token. USDT’s roughly 180 billion USD market capitalization has long been driven by trading and remittances; StableFund aims to make productive credit the next leg of growth.
Bitcoin traded around 77,100 USD, ether near 2,446 USD and solana around 100 USD at the time of writing.
400m seed and they think institutions will hand over 3 billion for a fund that settles in USDT? the returns better be spicy
spicy returns are guaranteed on paper, fintech receivables clear mid teens and the managers take carry off 3 billion. whether LPs actually see it after the first default wave, thats the spicy part
institutional appetite for private credit is real tho. evergreen structure means no forced exits, thats the actual selling point here
emerging market fintech lending clears high teens yields all day. question is what the trade receivables collateral is worth when the cycle actually turns
400 million seeded going after 3 billion, and every loan settles in USDT. tether basically built itself a captive demand machine for its own token
Short duration asset backed sounds nice until a credit cycle hits 60 countries of fintech borrowers at once. Nobody has stress tested that book
short duration helps until every fintech platform in 60 countries hits the same margin call week. credit cycles correlate exactly when you least want them to
60 countries of trade receivables sounds diversified until the same dollar liquidity crunch reprices all of it at once. giving it a pass on track record tho, Fasanara ran similar books through 2022 without blowing up
short duration asset backed lending in 60 countries through fintech platforms. basically recreating money market funds with extra steps and tbh less oversight
1.5 billion profit in one quarter and now they want to be a lender too. I remember when tether just issued coins and stayed quiet. Those days are gone
exactly this. every loan settled in USDT means the float grows with the credit book. its a stablecoin moat dressed up as a lending strategy
USDT settling consumer receivables across 60 countries is a massive regulatory question parked inside a fund structure. every watchdog from the SEC to the EU is going to want a word with this one
paypal drops PYUSDx this month, fidelity pushes FIDD, and tether answers with a whole credit fund. cold war out here