Tether USD (USDT) can be used as collateral to trade or market make on Perp. This guide will show you how to bridge USDT, as well as how to use centralized exchanges to receive USDT on the Optimism network.
Bridging USDT to Optimism
In this example, we’ll use the Optimism Gateway to bridge USDT from Ethereum mainnet to Optimism.
Select USDT and enter the amount you want to bridge. If it’s the first time you have bridged USDT to Optimism, then you’ll need to approve access to your USDT for Optimism Gateway. Select exact allowance to approve access to the amount in your wallet or use infinite allowance if you plan to bridge more USDT in the future and don’t want to execute further approval transactions.
Click on ‘Approve’ and then confirm the transaction in your wallet. Once the approval transaction has gone through, you’ll then be able to bridge USDT by clicking on ‘Deposit’.
Confirm the transaction in your wallet and your funds will arrive on Optimism in around 20 minutes. You’ll be notified once the bridging transaction is complete.
If you already have funds on Optimism, you can save yourself the gas fees required for bridging by using a decentralized exchange (such as Uniswap or Velodrome) to get some USDT.
Withdrawing USDT from Centralized Exchanges
At the time of writing, several centralized exchanges support USDT deposits to the Optimism network:
In this example, we’ll be using OKX to withdraw USDT to Optimism. If you don’t have any assets on OKX, you can sign up for an account and deposit USDT (or some other token then swap to USDT).
After depositing some funds, you’ll have to transfer the assets from your funding account to your trading account, so you can convert to USDT using the spot markets. Select the cryptocurrency you deposited, choose ‘Trading account’ under the ‘To' field, then enter the amount and click on ‘Transfer’.
After transferring to your trading account, click on 'Trade' shown by the menu bar at the top of the page and select 'Basic Trading'.
Search for USDT or the asset you’ve deposited to display the markets that allow you to exchange your assets for USDT. In this example, we’ll be swapping USDC for USDT.
Set a market or limit order to sell USDC for USDT, then click ‘Sell USDC’:
Once you have USDT in your trading account, you’ll then need to transfer to your funding account to proceed with the withdrawal. To do this, head to the ‘My Assets’ page:
Click on ‘Transfer’:
Select USDT and make sure you’re transferring from the trading account to the funding account. Select the amount and then click ‘Transfer’.
Once you have USDT in your funding account, you can then withdraw via Optimism.
Select ‘Withdraw’ from the Assets menu on the top left-hand corner of the page:
Select USDT and the ‘On-chain’ withdrawal method, then click ‘Continue’:
You’ll then have to enter some withdrawal details. Enter your USDT address, select USDT-Optimism for the withdrawal network, then enter the amount you want to withdraw:
Click ‘Continue’ to confirm the withdrawal. Your USDT will be credited to your address in approximately 5 minutes.
The process is similar for other centralized exchanges that support USDT withdrawals to Optimism (deposit, or convert your assets, to USDT and then select the Optimism network when withdrawing).
Depositing USDT on Perp
After bridging to Optimism or receiving your USDT withdrawal, head over to https://app.perp.com.
The wallet column shows your withdrawn amount. To start using USDT as collateral to trade or market make, click on the ‘Deposit’ button for this asset:
The following pop-up will appear. Enter the amount of USDT you want to deposit or select the max to use all the USDT in your wallet. If you’re depositing USDT for the first time, you’ll have to approve the deposit, which only needs to be done once.
Click ‘Approve’ and confirm the transaction in your wallet.
After the one-time approval transaction is confirmed, you’ll then be able to deposit. Click on ‘Deposit’ and confirm the transaction to start using USDT as collateral.
After successfully depositing USDT, you’ll see the amount underneath the 'Amount' and the 'Available' columns, as shown below:
You can now start trading or market making across any of our markets using USDT as collateral!