Points of Focus

• Kraken is the first US exchange on Tempo, settling USDT0 in 0.6 seconds with stablecoin fees and no gas token.
• Tempo, incubated by Stripe and Paradigm, counts Deutsche Bank, Visa, and OpenAI as design partners and MoneyGram as an anchor validator.
• USDT0 maintains 1:1 USDT redeemability on Tempo, eliminating bridge exploit risk for regulated exchanges.

Kraken became the first US-regulated exchange to natively support USDT0 deposits and withdrawals on Tempo on June 1, connecting one of the largest US spot cryptocurrency exchanges to the payments-first layer-1 (L1) blockchain incubated by Stripe and Paradigm. Kraken clients can now move USDT0 on Tempo with sub-second settlement, fees paid in stablecoins, and no separate gas token required.

. @USDT0_to deposits & withdrawals are now live on @tempo, the Layer 1 purpose-built for stablecoin payments with sub-second finality and stablecoin-native gas.

Deposit now → https://t.co/SlleZX7ZXZ pic.twitter.com/mJ8zo8D5Zs

— Kraken Listings (@krakenlistings) June 1, 2026

The integration places Kraken within a network that has onboarded MoneyGram, OnePay, and a design partner roster that includes Deutsche Bank, Visa, Shopify, Nubank, Revolut, and OpenAI since its Sept. 4, 2025, announcement.

What USDT0 on Tempo actually does

USDT0 is structurally different from bridged USDt (USDT). Bridged stablecoin transfers involve locking tokens on a source chain and minting a wrapped equivalent on the destination chain, creating a dual-token structure where the wrapped asset and the underlying reserve are separated by a bridge smart contract. That bridge contract is both an exploit surface and a redemption dependency: The wrapped token is only as secure as the bridge that holds the locked collateral.

USDT0 is designed to move across networks while remaining directly redeemable 1:1 for the underlying USDT reserve. On Tempo, that means dollar-denominated value moves between Kraken and Tempo wallets with deterministic finality in approximately 0.6 seconds, without the reorganization risk that makes settlement on general-purpose blockchains unpredictable at the application layer.

For Kraken, the operational advantage is the elimination of gas token management. Every exchange offering USDT or USDC (USDC) withdrawals on Ethereum, Solana, or Polygon has had to maintain gas reserves in Ether (ETH), Solana (SOL), or Polygon (POL) to cover network fees, a separate treasury function that adds operational overhead, and a token exposure that has no relationship to the stablecoin business being run. Tempo replaces that entirely: Fees are paid in stablecoins, the same assets the exchange is already holding.

Tempo’s institutional ecosystem

The Kraken integration is the most commercially visible exchange-level deployment on Tempo to date, but the network’s institutional buildout has been advancing in parallel across three distinct verticals.

• On May 20, MoneyGram became Tempo’s anchor remittance validator in a strategic partnership that positions the company’s 200-country payment network as blockchain settlement infrastructure. MoneyGram brings institutional-grade compliance and operational scale to make stablecoin settlement function across markets where traditional payment rails are slow, expensive, or absent. As a validator, MoneyGram secures Tempo’s consensus while simultaneously building the stablecoin payout and collection rails that make the network commercially viable for cross-border remittances.
• On April 28, OnePay partnered with Tempo for stablecoin-powered payouts and account funding across its consumer fintech platform serving millions of American workers. OnePay’s focus is on instant payouts and direct deposit access. Tempo provides the always-on settlement layer that eliminates the batch processing windows of the ACH network.
• The Tempo network’s design partner list from its Sept. 4, 2025, announcement reads as an institutional cross-section: Anthropic, Coupang, Deutsche Bank, DoorDash, Lead Bank, Mercury, Nubank, OpenAI, Revolut, Shopify, Standard Chartered, and Visa. These are not integrations; they are organizations that provided design input to ensure Tempo’s architecture serves their specific payment use cases before the network launched. Kraken’s native USDT0 support is the first exchange-level production deployment emerging from that design process.

The payments layer-1 architecture

Tempo is Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible and built on Reth, Paradigm’s high-performance Ethereum execution client, targeting 100,000+ transactions per second with sub-second finality, per the Tempo introduction blog. The network is stablecoin-neutral: Users can pay gas fees in any supported stablecoin through an enshrined automated market maker, rather than holding a native network token. Dedicated payment lanes provide predictable costs during periods of high activity, addressing the fee volatility that has made general-purpose blockchains unreliable for time-sensitive payment flows.

The agentic payments use case is embedded directly in Tempo’s solution architecture. Low-cost, instant stablecoin payments for AI agents executing transactions autonomously are listed as a primary use case alongside cross-border payments, institutional settlement, and embedded finance.

The Circle Agent Stack, Coinbase x402, and MoonAgents Card have established the USDC-on-Ethereum layer for agent transactions. Tempo positions itself as the settlement alternative for the same agent economy on a network built specifically for payment throughput rather than general-purpose computation.

The GENIUS Act context

USDT0’s 1:1 redeemability structure is relevant to the GENIUS Act compliance framework that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) codified in its Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and sanctions rules for Permitted Payment Stablecoin Issuers.

A payment stablecoin must maintain 1:1 fiat reserves and guarantee redemption. USDT0 on Tempo satisfies those properties at the instrument level. Kraken’s support, as a regulated US exchange, validates that the compliance function has been assessed and cleared internally by one of the most scrutinized exchange operators in the US market.

The Nium-Circle partnership, announced May 27, connected USDC settlement to last-mile payouts across 190 countries through a single API. SoFiUSD launched for 13.7 million retail banking members on May 27. Georgia’s GELT completed its Ethereum mainnet lifecycle test on May 21.

Kraken’s USDT0 integration on June 1 extends the stablecoin infrastructure buildout into exchange settlement rails, the layer connecting institutional capital markets to the payment networks all of the above are building toward.