Swap Tether (USDT)

USDT is one price and four tokens here. Each lives on its own network with its own block cadence, fee token, address format and contract, and a transfer never crosses from one to another on its own. The table puts the four next to each other; the figures were checked on 14 October 2026 against the sources named under Key facts, and the minutes are the estimates this site uses.

Three issued by Tether, one by Binance

On TRON, Ethereum and TON the contract belongs to Tether and is on its list of supported protocols. On BNB Smart Chain it does not: that token is Binance-Peg USDT, issued by Binance and backed by USDT that Binance holds. The chain reports its name as Tether USD and its symbol as USDT, wallets show it as USDT, and the price is the same. The difference is who stands behind it, and that Tether's list is the wrong place to look for its contract.

Decimals: 6, 6, 18, 6

The decimals decide the smallest amount the token can express. 6 decimals means one-millionth of a USDT; the 18 of the BNB Smart Chain token mean a quintillionth. For a swap this changes nothing — the form works in whole USDT with cents — but it explains why a raw amount on BscScan has twelve more zeros than the same amount on Etherscan.

What the fee token means

A USDT transfer is a contract call, and the sending wallet pays for it in the network's own coin. A wallet with USDT and nothing else cannot send, on any of the four. On TRON the call uses energy, which comes from staked TRX or is burned from the TRX balance (TRON energy and bandwidth); on Ethereum it uses gas in ETH; on BNB Smart Chain gas in BNB; on TON a small amount of GRAM attached to the message.

Which to choose

If the receiver named a network, that is the answer. If not, the cost line in the form decides: enter the amount for each network and compare "You get". USDT network fees compared does the comparison at length, and Which USDT networks exchanges accept covers the receiving side.

Four networks, three address formats. The form checks the format for the network you selected, and that check catches most mistakes — but not the one that matters most, because two of the networks share a format.

0x… does not say which network

Ethereum and BNB Smart Chain use the same address format, and the same private key gives the same address on both. An address cannot tell you which network its owner is watching; only the owner can. The mixed-case checksum defined in ERC-55 (github.com, checked 14 October 2026) catches a mistyped character, not a wrong network. So when the receiving address starts with 0x, the network has to come from the person or the deposit page, in words.

T… is TRON, and only TRON

A TRON address is a 21-byte value with a leading 0x41, written in Base58Check as 34 characters starting with T (TRON developer documentation, 14 October 2026). It holds TRX and every TRC-20 token at once, so the address that receives USDT is the one that should hold a little TRX for the next transfer. A T… address pasted into an Ethereum form is rejected, which is the useful side of a distinct format.

UQ… and EQ… are the same account

A TON address is 48 characters of base64 built from a flag byte, a workchain byte, a 32-byte account and a 2-byte checksum. EQ… marks a bounceable address and UQ… a non-bounceable one; TON's documentation recommends the non-bounceable form for wallets and the bounceable one for contracts with their own logic (docs.ton.org, 14 October 2026). Both forms point to the same account, and the form accepts both for a USDT on TON payout.

The memo, TON only

Exchanges on TON usually give every customer one deposit address and tell deposits apart by a comment, shown as a memo or tag. If the deposit page shows one, it is part of the address: without it the USDT reaches the exchange and not your account there. The form has a memo field for USDT on TON; a personal wallet leaves it empty. USDT on TON: addresses, memos, mistakes goes through it with examples, and Memo, destination tag, payment ID covers the other networks that use such a field.

Checklist before you paste

1. The network in the form is the network the receiver named.
2. The address format matches that network: T… for TRON, UQ…/EQ… for TON, 0x… for the other two.
3. For 0x…, the receiver confirmed Ethereum or BNB Smart Chain in words.
4. For TON, the memo is filled in if the deposit page shows one.
5. The first and last four characters match after pasting.

A USDT transfer is not a transfer of the network's coin, and explorers show it differently from one. The hash opens a transaction whose value in TRX, ETH, BNB or GRAM is zero or tiny; the USDT amount is in a token transfer line further down. All four explorers were read on 14 October 2026.

A deposit you sent

1. Copy the hash from your wallet — the transaction hash, not the address.
2. Open it on the explorer of the network you sent on. Not found after a minute usually means the wallet never broadcast it; on TRON it can also mean the transaction expired before a block took it, which happens when the wallet was offline.
3. Find the token transfer line. It must name USDT with the contract from the Key facts, and the amount must be what the form asked for.
4. Check the receiver of that line: the deposit address from the form.
5. Watch the confirmations. The status page updates on its own when the count the site waits for is reached.

A payout you received

The status page shows the payout hash when the payout is sent. Open it on the explorer of the payout network and read the token transfer line: the receiver is your address, the amount is "You get" from the form, with the payout network fee already taken out. On TON the line shows two jetton wallet addresses, not your wallet address; the explorer names the owner of each, and yours is the owner of the receiving one.

What the explorer cannot tell you

An explorer shows that the transfer happened and to which address. It does not know whether the owner of a 0x… address watches Ethereum or BNB Smart Chain, and it does not know whether an exchange credited a TON deposit that arrived without its memo. For those, the only evidence is the receiver's own balance.

What a block explorer shows about a swap walks through both sides of a swap on the explorers, and Reading a swap status page explains each stage the status page shows.

Most USDT problems are not about the token. They are about the network it is on, the coin that pays for moving it, and the fields around the address. Each row below has happened to someone this week.

The wrong-network deposit

This is the one that costs the most, and the form cannot catch it, because the deposit is sent by your wallet, not by the form. The deposit address the form shows is for one network. If the wallet sends on another, the transfer confirms there, the explorer shows it, and the swap sees nothing. What can be done afterwards depends on whether the address is reachable on that other chain; the post linked in the table covers the cases.

The lookalike token

Every network has tokens named USDT that are not USDT. A wallet shows the name, not the issuer. The contract is the only thing that identifies the token: the four in the Key facts, and nothing else. Wallet shows zero after a USDT transfer is often this — the right amount arrived, at the right address, in a token the wallet does not list.

The empty fee balance

A USDT transfer is a contract call, and the wallet pays for it in the network's coin. On Ethereum that can be several times the cost of a plain ETH transfer at a busy hour; on TRON the energy for one transfer is burned from TRX if nothing is staked. Keep enough of the fee coin for the next two transfers, not one.

Less than the minimum arrives

A deposit under the route's minimum cannot be processed as a swap, because the payout fee has to fit inside it. The usual cause is an exchange withdrawal fee taken out of the amount. Minimums, maximums and network fees on small swaps shows how to read the minimum under the amount field.

USDT has moved between networks for its whole life: new networks are added, old ones are retired, and the token on each is a separate contract. What matters for a sender is which networks are live now and what Tether says about the ones that are not. The current state was read on tether.to on 14 October 2026.

Networks that are not Tether's. The BNB Smart Chain token has been issued by Binance from the start, which is why it does not appear on Tether's list in any year. The site swaps it like the other three, and the Key facts give its contract, read from the chain.

The retired chains. Tether's page keeps the identifiers of the deprecated chains "strictly for historical reference". The Block reported on 11 July 2025 that Tether planned to stop redemptions on those five chains from 1 September 2025; Cointelegraph later reported that Tether dropped the plan to freeze the contracts, so the tokens stay transferable but are no longer issued or redeemed. None of the five is on this site, and none ever was. If an old exchange account still shows a USDT balance on Omni or EOS, that balance is not something a swap here can take in.

What has not changed. The four contracts on this site are the same ones written in the Key facts, checked on 14 October 2026. Tether can freeze the balance of an address on the networks where it is the issuer; that has been a property of its contracts throughout. And a USDT balance has never moved between networks by itself — the day-to-day work of moving USDT to a different network is the same as it was years ago.

The rename on TON did not touch USDT. TON's coin was renamed from Toncoin to Gram on 15 June 2026. USDT on TON kept its contract, its decimals and its balances; only the coin that pays for moving it is now called GRAM. See the GRAM page.

Both are dollar tokens that hold close to one dollar, both are issued on many networks, and both are swapped here in both directions. The differences that matter to a sender are the issuer, the networks this site carries them on, and what "the same token" means in each case. The comparison was checked on 14 October 2026 against tether.to, Circle's contract list and the chains themselves.

Networks. The two tokens overlap on Ethereum only, as far as this site goes. USDT's cheap networks are TRON, BNB Smart Chain and TON; USDC's are Solana, Polygon and Base. Which token you want is often decided by which network the receiver uses, not by the token itself.

Issuer. USDC is issued by Circle everywhere it exists on this site; USDT on BNB Smart Chain is issued by Binance. Both arrangements have worked for years, and the price is the same — but when you check a contract against the issuer's list, you need to know which issuer's list to open.

Native and bridged. Circle calls its own tokens native and the bridge-made copies bridged; USDC.e on Polygon is the bridged one and is not what the USDC page moves. USDC native vs bridged explains the difference. USDT has no such split on this site's four networks: the Binance-Peg token is the USDT of BNB Smart Chain, not a copy of it.

Rate. USDT to USDC, and the reverse, is a swap between two dollar tokens, and the estimate stays close to one to one. What you give up is the payout network fee, shown in the form and already taken out of "You get"; it is largest when the payout lands on Ethereum.