Europe’s regulatory crackdown on Tether’s USDT is entering a new phase — even as the rest of the world shows little sign of losing its appetite for the token.

When Revolut told European users it would delist USDT after Aug. 31, the platform became another in a long line of European firms restricting access to the world’s largest stablecoin as they adapt to the requirements of the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation. Major exchanges including Coinbase and Kraken have already restricted or delisted USDT for European users. MiCA’s stablecoin rules have been phasing in since 2024, and the EU-wide transition period ended on July 1, putting further pressure on platforms to drop tokens that do not meet the rules. Those rules require fiat-backed stablecoins to be issued by an authorized EU entity and to meet reserve, redemption and disclosure requirements — and USDT has not received that authorization.

Yet according to Artemis Analytics, Tether being squeezed out of a major market has shown little sign of triggering a major shift in USDT activity.

“The data does not indicate any noticeable change in USDT supply or demand attributable directly to MiCA coming into effect in Europe… MiCA didn’t trigger a major venue or chain migration,” Alex Weseley, research and data, tells Magazine.

So why is demand for Tether holding up so well?

Stablecoins become financial infrastructure

One reason USDT demand is proving resilient is that dollar stablecoins are being used for more than trading or saving in other regions of the world.

In Argentina — a country long obsessed with stuffing dollars into mattresses and storing wealth outside the traditional financial system — stablecoin activity has continued to grow even though restrictions on accessing actual US dollars have eased.

Lemon, an Argentine crypto and financial services platform, processed $9.3 billion in total volume in 2025, up 60% from the previous year. Transactional users grew 70% to nearly 1.8 million, and stablecoin volume grew 45% year-on-year.

That suggests stablecoins are doing more than simply filling a gap created by restrictions on dollar access; they are becoming part of the way people move and spend money. Policymakers elsewhere are adapting to the same shift: in the United States, the GENIUS Act, signed into law in July 2025, created the country’s first federal framework for payment stablecoins, imposing licensing and reserve requirements on issuers.

“The role of USDT and other dollar stablecoins is evolving. What we’re seeing is a shift from stablecoins as a store of value to stablecoins as financial infrastructure,” Ignacio Gimenez, Lemon’s business and planning manager, tells Magazine.

He says stablecoin activity is “increasingly driven by payments, cross-border transfers and global financial services rather than only by savings,” adding that Argentine users can pay in Brazil through PIX using pesos, receive dollars or euros from overseas and have them credited as USDC, or move between bank dollars and digital dollar balances.

That makes stablecoin demand harder to measure by simply looking at which tokens are available on regulated exchanges.

MiCA is changing the European gateway

Lemon’s experience highlights a shift in user behavior in one of Latin America’s biggest economies, and there are signs that emerging markets are beginning to follow the trend.

Artemis data shows the number of daily users on Binance Smart Chain rose from about 318,000 in June 2024 to 1.56 million by July 2026, while daily users on Tron increased 44% to around 908,000. These chains are favored by day-to-day stablecoin users for their low fees.

“That looks like expanding global and emerging market usage rather than a Europe-specific migration, and there’s no clear MiCA-timed break in the chain data,” Weseley says.

That doesn’t mean MiCA is irrelevant: it is certainly changing which stablecoins regulated European platforms can offer, and reshaping the stablecoin market inside the bloc. Tether has said Europe accounts for only a small share of its users, with growth concentrated in emerging markets.

Maksym Sakharov, chief executive and co-founder of WeFi, a crypto financial infrastructure company, says regulation is primarily changing how users access dollar stablecoins, rather than removing the underlying demand — whether for trading, payments, or cross-border transfers.

“Users do not choose a stablecoin only because it is available on one regulated platform. They choose it because counterparties use it, liquidity is deep, and it works across many markets,” he tells Magazine.

For some platforms, the shift began well before the MiCA deadline. Erald Ghoos, chief executive of OKX Europe, says OKX has not offered USDT to European users for around two years, so the latest MiCA deadline did not make much material difference.

Europe’s alternatives have a dollar problem

Perhaps the bigger question in Europe is what European users will embrace instead. Dollar-denominated stablecoins hold a powerful advantage, since the crypto market has always treated the greenback as its primary benchmark.

While Ghoos doesn’t expect that to change globally any time soon, he says institutional interest in euro-denominated stablecoins is picking up.

“What we are seeing from institutional players is interest in creating more EUR-denominated stablecoins, which is worth watching as it develops,” he says.

For retail users, euro-denominated stablecoins could also make practical sense by removing additional friction, such as currency conversion, from transactions. Some compliant options are already available: Circle, whose dollar stablecoin USDC has remained listed for European users because it is issued by an EU-authorized entity in France, also issues a MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin, EURC. But while MiCA may determine which products are available through regulated European gateways, it cannot change the dollar’s role in global crypto markets.