Friday is as busy a day as any for Paolo Ardoino. The billionaire CEO of Tether, issuer of the $144 billion USDT stablecoin, is holding court at Cantor Fitzgerald’s Manhattan offices, fielding back-to-back interviews with reporters eager to ask about his company’s U.S. plans. Cantor, helmed for decades by now-U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, not only serves as Tether’s primary custodian for U.S. Treasurys, it also reportedly holds a 5% stake in the company.
Just weeks into the new Trump administration, Ardoino has flown in to meet with lawmakers on Capitol Hill and regulators at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). With competing stablecoin bills advancing in both chambers of Congress, Tether wants a seat at the table. “I think it’s important that our voice gets heard in the stablecoin bill process,” says Ardoino. “Our competitors are very tiny. They don’t represent the actual use cases of stablecoins.”
That’s only a slight exaggeration: the nearest rival, Circle’s USDC, is less than half its size, with $60 billion in stablecoin issuance. The next largest, USDS (formerly DAI), has about $8 billion. Tether is, of course, the undisputed leader, clocking 30 million new wallets every quarter, by Ardoino’s count. It had a first-mover advantage and leaned into emerging markets, turning its dollar-pegged token into a lifeline in volatile economies.
Last year, higher rates Treasury bills helped it generate $13 billion in “financial result”, which it calls profits (though unaudited) in its press releases. Tether pays no interest to those who deposit dollars into its stablecoin, USDT, and as a result earns most of its revenue from the yield on Treasurys. It also has investments in cryptocurrencies, precious metals, corporate bonds and loans. About 82% of the reserves backing its digital dollar are in cash or short term government paper. Tether’s main rival, Circle, which intends to go public in the U.S. later this year, reported only $285 million in pre-tax profits in 2024, according to its recent SEC filing.
Still, Tether, which says it’s headquartered in El Salvador, has long been seen as dodging U.S. oversight. In 2021, it settled with the CFTC for $42.5 million for making misleading statements about the reserves backing USDT. Ardoino, who has long been based in Lugano, Switzerland, wants to flip that narrative. “Some of our competitors have tried to push regulations towards killing Tether. Their entire strategy was ‘Tether will never be in the US. Tether is afraid to come to the US.’ Well, here we are,” he says with a grin. “And now we’re even thinking about creating a domestic stablecoin in the U.S. How fun would that be for our competitors?”
It wouldn’t replace USDT, which Ardoino says is purpose-built for emerging markets, where much of Tether’s volume moves on billionaire Justin Sun’s Tron blockchain. Instead, it would be a parallel product tailored to the U.S., a highly banked, highly digital economy. “You cannot create something that is inferior or equal to PayPal, Zelle, CashApp,” he admits. “We will take a bit of time to really dive deep into the market but we have some ideas on how we can create a great product focused on digital payments.” Tether also hired a CFO last month to finally pursue a full financial audit, which it has promised for years. Talks are underway with one of the Big Four accounting firms, according to the company.
Italian-born Ardoino scoffs at stablecoin upstarts chasing institutions—“Institutions will betray you for one basis point”—and is equally dismissive of the industry’s obsession with yield-bearing stablecoins, which, like money market funds, pay depositors for the privilege of holding their money. They are “a bad idea,” he says flatly. First, they are probably securities. Second, it’s a race to the bottom. “If you have to give back all the yield, you will not make money. And if you say ‘I will give back everything apart from 1%,’ then someone else will say, ‘Fine, I will give back everything minus one basis point’,” he posits.
Currently, yield-bearing stablecoins are absent from the stablecoin bills being considered by Congress, a likely response to concerns that such tokens could compete with banks and other traditional financial institutions that offer savings accounts and money market funds.
If you are in the U.S., sure, complain about not earning interest, Ardoino concedes. “But why use USDT? You can buy T-bills yourself.” In places like Argentina, he argues, where local currency can swing 10% in a single day, a 4% annual yield is irrelevant. “They don’t care about it. They just want the product that works. The problem is most of our competitors look at this street and the next. They cannot pinpoint where Africa is on the map.”
Ardoino makes an exception for one would-be rival: World Liberty Finance, a crypto venture majority-owned by the Trump family, which recently unveiled plans for a stablecoin dubbed USD1. “I like USD1 very much, and I like the World Liberty Finance guys,” Ardoino says. “I told them ‘I will be happy to be your friend and help you to create a product here that is successful.’” He has met with one of the company’s cofounders, though says there have been no talks of investment, and he hasn’t met the Trumps. Not yet, anyway.
While Tether’s U.S. stablecoin plans are still early and uncertain, it is forging ahead in an attempt to diversify into artificial intelligence. The company is planning to launch its own AI platform, a peer-to-peer alternative to models like OpenAI, in June (or September), according to Ardoino.
“Our platform will allow you to keep control over your own data and do all the inferencing, all the complex AI logic within your own device—from a $30 smartphone to an iPhone to an Android phone to any laptop—and also connect directly to other devices to get more power. It’s actually a way to retain control of your data so you don’t have to share it with ChatGPT, for example,” says Ardoino, pushing crypto’s guiding “decentralization” ideology. “Centralization is weak. I think OpenAI and all these other companies will eventually evaporate because they are just money-losing operations. They are trying to milk people’s data.”
Tether’s vision is the opposite: a billion niche AI models instead of one god model. “Everyone can create a model focused on one specific thing,” Ardoino says, students, universities, small businesses. The platform will be free to use, though each agent will eventually have a USDT wallet baked in.
So far Tether has employed some 60 developers, about a third of its total staff, to build the system, which it is self-funding. Related to its expansion into AI, the company has poured money into its venture fund, now totaling about $10 billion, according to Ardoino–making it one of the largest among crypto firms. The investments could help drum up support for its new business from portfolio companies. Tether is estimated to have invested over $1 billion across multiple transactions in 2023 and 2024 into Northern Data, a data center operator listed in Germany.
Says Ardoino, “I want Tether to be known, not only for its stablecoin, but for its technology—a net positive for the world.”
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