Bankless - The Stablecoin King | Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino on GENIUS Act, Circle IPO, Bitcoin & Tether to Trillions

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino returns to Bankless at a historic moment for stablecoins. With the Genius Act advancing in the U.S. Congress, Paolo discusses what regulatory clarity means for Tether, the future of USDT, and the company’s plans to launch a domestic stablecoin. We explore the Circle IPO hype, Tether’s eye-popping profits, its growing presence in the U.S. Treasuries and Bitcoin mining, and how grassroots distribution across emerging markets powers its dominance. Paolo also gives a glimpse into Tether’s ambitions in AI, tokenized gold, and the battle to distribute the dollar where banks can’t reach. ------ 🎬 DEBRIEF | Ryan & David Unpacking the Episode https://www.bankless.com/podcast/debrief-the-stablecoin-king-tether-ceo-paolo-ardoino ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🪙FRAX | SELF SUFFICIENT DeFi https://bankless.cc/Frax 🦄UNISWAP | SWAP ON UNICHAIN https://bankless.cc/unichain 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 🌐CELO | BUILD TOGETHER AND PROSPER https://bankless.cc/Celo 🟠 BINANCE | THE WORLDS #1 CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://bankless.cc/binance ------ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 5:32 GENIUS Act 12:54 Tether & The US 22:13 Domestic Competition 26:23 Circle IPO 23:36 Handling Pressure 28:32 Stablecoin Valuations 31:38 Winning the Next Chapter 36:52 USDT in Emerging Markets 41:58 Tether & Crypto Correlation 45:52 Tether Ventures 53:25 Tether Wallet? 56:44 Tether & Bitcoin 1:00:15 Other Assets 1:01:07 Bitcoin Mining 1:04:58 Tokenized Gold 1:09:01 GENIUS Act Consequences 1:12:27 Europe 1:14:49 Why Tether is Good 1:17:50 Closing & Disclaimers ------ RESOURCES Paolo Ardoino https://x.com/paoloardoino USDT Insights https://usdt.network/ Tether https://tether.io/ ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

Last year, we made 13.7 billion in profits. And this year, I think we are going to beat that. Wait, 13.7 billion in profits? Last year. And this year, I think we can do a little bit better. Welcome to bankless, where we explore the frontier of stable coin finance. This is Ryan Sean Adams. I'm here with David Hoffman, and we're here to help you become more bankless.

Guys, there's a Game of Thrones going on right now. A stable coin war of sorts. Tether is the undisputed number one. lead of stable coins right now. So I guess that makes our next guest, Paulo Ardonio, who's its CEO, the stablecoin king. And I got to say, for a king, he's pretty unassuming, but he has ambitious plans for the continued distribution and dominance of tether. And that's going to be important in this new era, an era where we've just seen the Genius Act, the U.S.'s landmark stablecoin bill, just past the Senate. Looks like that's going to go forward to Trump's desk and it will get signed.

So my biggest question going to this episode was, assuming the Genius Act passes, what's Paolo planning to do with USCT and Tether? Is he going for compliance? Or is he going to launch a new US domestic stable coin and bifregate things? The answer sounded like it was both, but it was also really nuanced

and you'll have to listen in to find out and get your take. He also said, and this made David and I almost fall out of our chairs, that Tether made almost 14 billion in profits last year. Okay, that's profits. I did some math after this episode was recorded, and if you take the price-to-earnings ratio of Circle right now, which is trading at pretty heavy valuations, and you multiply that by the earnings of Tether around $14 billion,

you turn Tether into a $13.7 trillion company. That'd be the largest company right now that exists, ahead of Microsoft, Apple, and Vitya, and all of the rest. I'm not sure if Tether is worth that much, but it's certainly gargantuan in scale. He also broke the news that Tether is launching a new product this year. So let's get right into that episode with Pollo, but before we do, I want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible. In the wild west of DFI, Stability and Innovation, which is why you should check out FRAX Finance. The protocol revolutionizing stable coins, defy, and Rolex.

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He's at the helm of Tether, the $150 billion stable coin. The thing that really brought stable coins into existence in the first place. Last time we talked, this was pre-stable coin bills, pre-Genius Act, all of the stuff that's going on inside of Capitol Hill. So there's a bunch to get updated on. Now with the U.S. on the brink of passing just a massive stable coin bill that just got voted on and passed it in the Senate, it goes back to the House. There are a lot of things to discuss. Paulo, welcome back to Bankless. Thank you for having me, guys.

I just want to get your first reaction to the passing of the Genius Act. It still has some work left to do. It has to go back to the House. But people are more than cautiously optimistic, I would say, Donald Trump sent out that tweet saying, guys, I just want to approve this thing. House, just get it done. Let's get this done. What was your first reaction to the Genius Act passing in the Senate?

For us, as, you know, Tadler is the creator of a stable coin industry in 2014, we are very honored that the most powerful country in the world, the most powerful government in the world, is taking good care of a technology or legislating on a technology that we created 11 years ago. So that is very exciting. I think that Genius Act is a step in the right direction. It creates a framework. Well, of course, as you said, it's still.

needs to be passed by a house, but seems there is a good momentum. So it creates a strong framework for domestic stable coins, as well as foreign stable coins like USDT that could find in their ability to meet their requirements through comparable regimes. So we think that the Tether USDT is in the right spot to comply as a foreign issuer. And also, as I announced, I think a couple of months ago now, we are looking at creating a the grassroots domestic stable coin in the United States. So the Genius Act creates a very, very high bar for everyone. That's the thing that I think I like the most and it's very fair.

In a sense that it creates a very high bar when it comes to AML and compliance. Yesterday there was a huge news of Tether collaborating with the Department of Justice. Tether was able with its own means almost one year and a half ago at this point to identify through its monitoring. monitoring technology, we built, I think, the most amazing technology for monitoring our secondary markets in the blockchain ecosystem when it comes to stable coins and specific USDT. We were able to identify a big battery scheme, and when we did that, we immediately notified the law enforcement, i.e., the DOJ, and they agreed with our analysis. We proceed to

the freezing, and now basically the DOJ is in the process of receiving this money and working restitution. So these are great examples of what Tether does. We collaborate with more than 250 law enforcement agencies across more than 55 different countries. There is no financial institution that has these numbers. So we are happy to prove more and more and keep raising the bar. And when I see that those type of requirements in the Genius Act, I'm very content because I think that we are doing that best than anyone else. The requirements of strong financials are also very good. No one wants to have another Theraluna. Tether has more than $125 billion in treasuries.

It's growing, you know, over the last, all the data satstations, we have been growing our monetary base in U.S. treasuries. So we are going the right direction. So we think that, you know, that's having a requirement for a strong balance sheet is very important. Tether has, in this moment, as a group equity, has around $176 billion in front of $155 billion in market cap of the stable coin and precisely we keep just

on top of the single reserves of the stable coin of the 100% of reserves of the USDT stable coin we keep around $6 billion in excess compared to the standard banking system that usually goes in fraction of reserve up to 90%

so they keep only 10% of liquid assets a tether has like 100 something percent like 105% of of liquid assets as reserved of the stable coin. On top of that, we have another $15 billion as a group equity to add. So it is very unprecedented. And, you know, so we are basically, in general, we are very excited. Of course, you know, we need to see the final form also to proceed with our domestic,

with our intention of the domestic stable coin. But, you know, I just, I just want to upload the efforts that have been done by Senator Agate, Lammis and all the others, David Sachs, Hines, yeah, and the rest. Assuming the Genius Act gets passed as it stands today, what doors open for Tether downstream of that? Like, what happens next? What's your guys' strategy post-Genius Act getting approved? And also, is there anything in the Genius Act or not in the Genius Act that you would

have liked to have seen? Like, what would be your biggest amendment to the Genius Act, if any? So I think that the Genius Act would provide the clarity that everyone needed in order to operate more safely. So first of all, we come from the last four years, not as Tether, but as an industry. We come from the last four years where was clear this thing called Operation Shockpoint 2.0,

where the OCC, where the administration, and they were against crypto. So banking was, crypto banking was not very much possible. And when they tried, like remember 2023, when our major competitor almost died because of Silicon Valley Bank and Silvergate Cyncher, all targeted by, you know, the Operation Shockpoint 2.0, but nevertheless almost killed our competitor.

So that's not very good. Now, so I think that the new administration is creating a framework that ensures that there is support from the institution, the administration, from the federal authorities for crypto banking. And so that will improve the safety of the industry as a whole. So we're very excited about this. that the genius act is also giving the opportunity to other players to step in, right? I mean, to me, when I see all the consortium of banks, JP Morgan, Amazon, and Walmart

and others are declaring that they want to create the stable coins, everyone, their sisters now want to create a stable coin, that's great. I mean, the more the merrier, like a welcome player too, as I said on X, because I think that the beauty of it is that, unfortunately so, unfortunately. Unfortunately, all these competitors will focus on the U.S. markets that, you know, the way I describe it is like there is some opportunity globally, that the opportunity is insane. There are 3 billion people in the world that are unbanked, and the Tether covers 450 million users now, but all the rest are like, you know, there is so much to do. And so the opportunity is big, but what I feel is like most of the competitors will keep competing in the U.S. and Europe because they are the low-hanging fruits. and in a way, in a certain way, when it comes to profitability, it's great for Tether,

but also is not great for the industry itself or is not great for the end users, because technically you would have more competitors so that you can bring the efficiency at higher level and also the costs at the lower level. I do think Tether has done a fantastic job outside of the U.S. in particular to recruit new stablecoin users, and the usage metrics certainly show that. Paolo, I want to make sure we get details on kind of your plan post-Genius Act, because there are multiple paths now, it seems, that Tether could take. And let's just assume the Genius Act passes.

In fact, I was looking at Polly Market this morning. We've got an 80% probability on a polymarket, okay, that the Genius Act passes. That's the best it's ever been. I was thinking about last time we had this conversation with you, it was February 2024. And that was just a completely different world with respect to U.S. and its relationship to crypto, not to mention stable coins. We had Operation Chokepoint. Anyway, okay, let's talk about.

the path forward for Tether itself, USDT. We talked to Senator Bill Haggerty yesterday, who's a co-author of the bill, and we asked them specifically about Tether, and this is what he said, if an offshore issuer like Tether wants U.S. market access, our bill lets Treasury run a comparability test, and if their home rules match ours, they can keep operating. Otherwise, they'll need a U.S. subsidiary that meets the same reserve and disclosure standards as everybody else. He further said, Tether can start complying tomorrow. So can you give us the details on kind of what's your plan? So you have USDT, which is currently not compliant.

It seems like there could be a path to get USDT compliant. In order to meet that path, you have to go through some additional auditing rigor. You have to refine your treasury, maybe be more domestic, be more onshore. I'm not sure everything that goes into that, but there is a path there and you could acquire an OCC license for that. There's also the path that I think you have announced, which is to create a domestic tether stable coin. That's a separate type of asset that is really focused on the U.S. And then I guess you would preserve U.S.D. This seems to fracture liquidity, though.

Anyway, give us a sense of what your plan is in some more detail here. Right. So our interest is, and I think that even with USDT, actually with USDT, we plan to follow that pathway to meet the requirements. I think that if you have a company, and last year we made $13.7 billion in profits, and this year, I think we are going to beat that. Wait, $13.7 billion in profits?

Last year. And this year, I think we can do a little bit better. Look, only with, only having $155 billion, you know, the fat didn't cut the rates. We have been saying that for a long time, and, you know, kind of was true. So the rates are still around 5%. So you do the month, it's, you know, give or take, 7.5 billion, just because of that.

And then all the rest we are doing, all the other investments, all like, you know, we have been investing gold and Bitcoin and all that, right? So it's, well, this year I think we are going to do much better. You know, still the year is long, but, you know, why people do think that we don't have the ability to meet with their requirements? Because not saying that you said that, but I saw that on X, right? So people think that we're going to let it go. We are going to not continue to support the best business in the world. You know, why is that? I mean, again, we have the profitability to, and by the way, we are acquiring more treasuries than anyone else,

apart maybe a couple of countries. But, you know, the pathway is there. Like last year, we were the fifth largest purchaser of U.S. treasuries. Okay. Just people don't appreciate the stat. the fifth largest purchaser of U.S. Treasuries, and that's taking into account all of the countries that are purchasing U.S. Treasuries as well. So number five ranked with like entire countries. Yeah. And we are in total overall, the 18th largest country. We are not a country, but

holding U.S. Treasuries. So that's the power of stable coins. And I think that Bessent understood that very well. The president understood very well. It's, is one of the best aids to, the US economy. And look, think about it. The one thing that is very powerful about USDT compared to everyone else is that

USDT focuses outside the United States but also means that its people outside the United States are purchasing USDT and with that money we purchase US treasuries.

So in a way, is people, we are decentralizing the ownership of the US debt. So, that you don't have one single guy like Xi Jinping that can press a button and sell them altogether. It's 400 million different

brains that will not act altogether. And that is great service first. But also, I think that is much better for the US to have the debt of the US not owned by US people. Otherwise, I think that that is kind of the recipe for disaster. So you want people outside

the US owning the US debt. And so that is also what data is making. So we have, as I said, as I think Senator Hagerty, is right, right? There is a pathway. There is a process, right? So there is a pathway that you have,

there is a comparable regime, reciprocity. It will take a bit of time because, you know, countries have to create these regimes. And what I think will the Genus Act do is exactly this. We'll open the path for every single other country in the world to adopt the GenuSaft, almost exactly like that. So that there are, the US is the greatest country in the world. So everyone will copy that.

Because if you think about it, about it, apart UAE, I mean, Europe has a very, very bad regime with like 60% of reserves that has to be capped in an insure cash deposits. That's what happened to our competitor with Silicon Valley Bank. So you don't want, Europe has a bad regime, but everyone else, like UAE, has a very similar regime to the Genus Act. And, you know, Singapore is deep in their toes in the water. But when the US will pass this, I can guarantee you that every other country will follow

and that will open a path for reciprocity. Okay, so but on USDT then, it sounds like you're saying your primary plan is to just get USDT compliant with the Genius Act and so, you know, but if that's the case then, why launch a domestic on, like, on U.S. shore asset as well? Why have two?

Is that just for redundancy? Is that like a backup plan? No, it's a great question. But, you know, I think that it serves two completely different use cases. the way I see it and maybe might be controversial but I think the US

will be a market where the current stable coin business model will not work. So of course there is a lot of frenzy now in the US because of the Circle IPO but no one will make money in the US it will be a race to the bottom on making the money on stable coins in the US.

Sure. Look at when exchanges, crypto exchanges starting in 2012 Well, 2010, around 2010, right? And BitFinex was, in 2012, was making 20 business points in fees, every trade. Now, you get one basis point is a taker fee compared to 20, like 10 years ago or 12 years ago.

And, you know, it's basically a race to the bottom. When you have, look at the US, US is the market in the world where there is the highest efficiency as money rails. So you could argue that you has as, 90% efficiency to financial rails. So if you add a stable coin in the US,

you will bring the efficiency from 90% to 95%. So the premium that people will pay for that is very little. If you are in another part of the world, you are like Nigeria, the efficiency of financial raise

is like 20%. If you add a stable coin, you get to 50%. So you have an increase of 30% of efficiency. So that is why you know, people in the emerging markets are happy if they leave to us the interest simply because the interday volatility

over the national currency is higher than 4% that you can give them on a yearly basis. So, to me, it's important to have a distinction between, you know, two products, two use cases. Basically, to me, in the US, stable coins will become, at some point, tokenized money market funds. Like, I've seen this JPMD.

It will be kind of like that. and like every other stable coins will be coming like that where basically the entire yield will be shared back. And so to us, then, in order to stable coin in the US that we want to create

has to compete on a different level, has to compete in programmability, has compete in services, has compete not with, it does not, cannot compete with the same business model that we have for USDT. That is a stable coin

that is made for the foreign world. I see. So you're still thinking two products, potentially because they will serve two different use cases, but you're also saying that you do intend to get USDT compliant under the Genius Act as well. That is our intention, yes. There's a growing conversation about domestic stablecoin issuers.

There's been a bunch of rumors about things like Amazon, Walmart, even like meta, Twitter, launching stablecoins. And we also know that like JP Morgan City Wells Fargo are also, they're exploring this consortium stable coin. Kind of feels like cope to me, but that's just my opinion. there's going to be a lot of domestic competition coming out. So if large U.S. banks can mint deposit, tokenized deposits that settle against Fed balances, what moat would you say tether still has in five years after this becomes pretty commonplace domestically?

So there is still a lot of potential with our distribution partners and our own distribution networks, right? So again, the thing is that banks usually would sell their stable coin to their own customers. So I don't see a bank banking employees breaking their back in the streets, you know, doing educational stable coins and going to basically the normal people or the people in the lower West tier of richness.

That always was our approach, right? So we never went to, when we open a new country, we don't go to, you know, the local biggest bank like our competitors. We go, we do education in the streets. We work in the streets. We explain how to, we do it education schools, we go door to door, basically.

We find the partners locally that are aligned with exactly this vision of grassroots adoption from the bottom up. And so that is also possible. I mean, although the US has great financial rails still, you know, I was reading that, you know, the people struggle even to keep bank accounts open. So more and more in the US, you will have a tier of population that will benefit from a product that has our more like more direct approach to people rather than you know sitting on an ivory tower and you know just thinking that the word is the same of 20 years ago now i want to bring up the

conversation of the circle price post IPO launched at 31 dollars now trading at 200 dollars i saw some napkin math on twitter that if tether was given a commensurate evaluation tether would be valued at something like three trillion dollars or something like that what's your what's your reaction to the price action of the circle post-IPO. It's great. So we don't want to go public, first of all, because, I mean, companies that want to go public do it for two reasons. Either they need to have access to capital,

but our profitability is so high that we don't need that. And second, we would need, and by the way, we invest, with our profitability, we invested, I think in the last two years, more than $5 billion in the United States. That is something that is very little. mentioned, but it's very important. It's like, so we are giving back also to the country that, that, you know, has created this great currency, like the US dollar.

So, but, you know, you go public because you want to have access to cheap capital or because, you know, the shareholders wants to have an exit. And we don't need either, right? So we have great profitability and at the same time, we don't need an exit. We need, I want to stay in this company forever. I, you know, we are, we are having fun. we are enjoying, we think that it's almost like we just started

this company because there is so much to build the same, so much to prove so much, many and more ideas under, you know, same concept of UST but different verticals, different sectors, like in terms of disruption, right? So disruption for the benefit of the people and not the, not the, it's a few corporates. And so the, but when I see that multiplier,

I was like really thinking, well, that's a nice, that's a nice multiplier, because, you know, at some point you have to, you know, price what you are doing. And if that is comparative, that is, that is a great price. I mean, we'll see what, how, you know, how long it will last. But for us, couldn't be better. Going back to this notion that Tether is sitting shoulder to shoulder with countries when it comes to owning U.S. treasuries and then this implied, you know,

not really fair, but implied valuation of multiple trillions of dollars. Does it stress you out the magnitude of what you're building and what you're doing? Like, if I was managing enough treasuries to, you know, be considered a country in terms of just, like, geopolitical weight, that feels like a lot of pressure. Do you ever, like, do you stress out about this? Do you worry about this? Look, it also ties into, you know, sometimes people, you know, there is this old fad of, oh, Teter, you know, even in the respect of what I saw on Twitter, in the last recent days, It's almost like people still think is, you know, is 2014. People think, oh, maybe Tether, you know, Tether wants to hide and all that.

We keep our money in counterfeitgerald. That is a prime U.S. institution. We keep 120 plus billion dollars in counterfeitgerald in U.S. treasuries. So we are not hiding ourselves. We keep our money in the United States. So that's going back to the Genius Act, right? So it's not like, oh, Tether wants, does not want to come. comply or all that. I mean, we keep already

our money in the US. And so the EU has has basically control over our money because it sits in one of the most regulated entities in the world. That is a primary dealer, that has a direct connection to the Fed and all that.

So the reason why we are, we keep our money in counterfegeal is because I can sleep well at night. Because you know, they have a direct connection to the Fed. We have a great line with overnight reverse repos and repos. So it allows us to be comfortable if we get, you know,

tens of billions in redemptions. We can meet them without problems. And that's, I think, the beauty of the setup. And I think that the D-70 station and the GenoSact will help in making this industry even more solid. Paulo, I think investors right now are really trying to figure out what's the value of this whole stable coin thing, right? So, like, you could see Wall Street, you know, the gears are grinding

as they try to value Circle. And I think everyone is just like stable coins have just come on the radar for a lot of investors. And this has been silent in the background just growing and growing and growing every year. And I think Tether is finally getting a spotlight. I mean, Scott Bessent, the secretary of the treasury, just it seems to have come on his radar

that this is a big net buyer of bonds. Anyway, when it comes to valuation of stable coins in general, right, we're talking about a $45 billion market cap for Circle. David just read out the numbers. That's on like 150 million or so in annualized net income and annualized profit. You just said you were generating 13 billion, okay? And that was last year. And you said you expect this year to be bigger than that.

And so I'm just like calculating the numbers. David said $3 trillion, which is interesting. That would place Heather in the top five of all companies. I mean, just below what? Navidia? and maybe Apple and Microsoft, kind of in that camp. But it's not inconceivable based on the cash that you're throwing out. And then there's also this vast, very strong treasury as well.

Anyway, I know it's an interesting question for you to ponder, but now you have public market comps of a pure play stable coin company, and it's trading, God knows how much, I don't know, 200x profits, something like this, P.E. ratio? So what, like, what do you think Tether is actually worth today? To me a lot. So that is... I should say so.

Yes, to me a lot, but because it's... It's my baby, right? So it's, to me, it's worth a lot. But look, I don't know how sustainable. I mean, I don't know how many companies sustain 200X. And again, if they can continue to sustain 200X, it's great. It's great for us.

I mean, as Coms, as you said, we are not seeking for, for, you know, We are not actively seeking for investments. So we don't need to raise money. That's the problem. So we'll see. I mean, but it's just nice. It's nice to see.

It's nice to see because in the end, it's an industry that we feel we created in 2014. And so we're just proud. Like we, it's every day I wake up and pinch myself, you know, looking at these numbers. Like it come from a town with 600 people and living there and with cows and chicken rowing. rowing. And so, like, these numbers are out of this world. And I think it's, you know, just

entire, this is actually the achievement of an entire industry, including the crypto industry. You know, we, we went so far. We improved. We have, we had up and downs. But there are so many people that were stubborn and kept going even in the difficulties and built all this. So, you know, it's, it's a congratulations to everyone, I would say. So let's talk a bit more about winning kind of the next phase of stable coins. right? Because right now, I think it's safe to say Tether is one phase one, and that has been, well, Staplecoins have been primarily crypto-native. Genus Act means we're entering a phase two. David mentioned a whole bunch of U.S. companies that were talking about getting into the Stablecoin game.

All of the banks, these are your new competitors, right? So welcome to that. Now the banks are going to have a play at this. So will the tech companies as well, something like Meta. I read an interesting post from Arthur Hayes, it was just on Stablecoins, and he makes the point that the Stablecoin game is all about distribution, right? And Tether came out first, came out early, really pioneered the sector, had all of the crypto-native distribution, fantastic, I think, saturation and offshore. You know, Tron is a fantastic distribution networks, it seems like, for Tether, 80 billion Tether on Tron alone and a lot of usage and payments there. Anyway, the next phase of this whole stablecoin game, you're going to be faced with big tech. You're going to be faced with companies like META.

because meta have over 3 billion users worldwide. And so it's a new chapter. How do you win the next chapter with respect to distribution of the Tether Stablecoin? Well, one thing is interesting. Maybe, you know, again, the Genus Act is not, maybe, you know, we need to wait. But it seems like companies like Meta might have an hard time to launch a stablecoin, given if I'm not wrong, given the Genius Act, right? So there is kind of sort of a prohibition if you are not primarily involved

in finance, there is kind of a sort of prohibition. If, you know, that is at least my take from the language that is so. So that is going to be interesting how it will play out. So I think that big tech companies will need to partner with existing stablecoins providers or with maybe banks in order to support, you know, someone else's stablecoin and get a rev share for sure. But that will create a very interesting dynamic because I, again, it feels like meta or similar, you know,

will not be able to launch stable coin. Again, I could be wrong given the language, but I think I got it right. And so, but when it comes to distribution,

people, you know, Tether has more than 100 companies in its portfolio investments done with Tether investments, not as the reserves. And so that is where part of the profitability

goes and went. So that gives us enormous distribution channel. Think about, think about the US domestic stable coin. Rumble will launch Rumble wallet and has 70 million users.

It's not bad to start with. You know, it's a good bootstrap. You know, I think that is pretty much how many active users, well, much more active users than probably the biggest exchange in the US. So it's a great bootstrap. And then there are other opportunities that we invested in, like where that could, that actually build and held that to build in the last 11 years, the biggest distribution network for the US dollar in the history of humanity.

So we have millions of physical touchpoints around the world. So the reason why Tether is the Liddi stable coin and has such high metrics like 450 million users, we grow by 30 million new wallets per quarter. And we publish that data. We have this website called usdt.network, where we publish the updated data. 37% of our users are savings accounts, for example. So we have, we collect all these statistics. The reason is because we are actually growing, and we have been building this distribution network,

that is unprecedented, is granular with boots on the ground, or each really the smallest village in Philippines, or, you know, we invested from remittances companies to bodegas in Central South America, to building kiosks in Africa. So, you know, just in Africa, you know, we built, we are building, we did this pilot with 500 kiosks, with solar panels on top and rechargeable batteries inside. In Africa, 400 million people

don't have, 600 million people actually don't have access to electricity. And so we build these kiosks with solar panels on top and batteries inside we sell subscriptions for 3 USDT per month to the people in these villages. And we have around 500,000 users already

and 10 million battery swaps and by 2000 and 26 we're going to have 10,000 kiosks and end of 2030, we're going to have 100,000 kiosks. So we're going to touch around 30 million households by 2030. It means that 120 million people on average in Africa. First of all, is a change that you can see from space because you light up a continent.

And also, you know, you have 120 million people that are going to rely on a day-to-day basis on the US dollar in the form of USAT. That's how you bring the US dollar Germany farther and you bring it to the emerging markets. Is that what we, you know, what boiled in our pot for the last many years? And that is one of the least understood things about tether. I was going to say, I just like as going over these stats that you're talking about,

and this is all on usdt.network, right? 440 million total estimated users of tether. I feel like the entire US has been sleeping on this use case. I mean, there's been so much talk of crypto not having a killer app. it being just kind of a speculative casino, just, you know, Bitcoin, that kind of thing. We have 440 million users using the US dollar. How did this first phase of distribution happen? Was it all kind of, it can't have been all an emerging market type of story, right?

It's like, can you explain these numbers to people who are seeing them for the first time? Actually, it's funny because if you can scroll down a little bit to the chart of the growth of the market cap here, right? Look at 2020 and what happened. Do you know what happened in 2020? Do you remember? Oh, yeah. We had a little global pandemic. You're talking about that one?

Yeah. So, and, you know, for people who can't see, we are at 4.7 billion tether in 2020. Yes. So, and this is in retrospect, right, because we didn't have a marketing team until 2022. So, and look at the growth up to 2022. So the reason why.

that happened is we understood recently, we went back and we asked a lot of questions to ourselves. So think about the emerging markets developing countries. They have two common denominators. You know, well, three. They are in general poor. They have this high inflation, higher than, of course, the welfare countries.

But they have two other things. They have good penetration of smartphones, and so they are still very digital. And they have more children. more youth, younger population. From 2017 to 2020, this youth is the one that learned about crypto before anyone else.

And in the meanwhile, when in 2020, when the pandemic happened, something changed. The parents of these kids were going in the streets with the pandemic. The pandemic accelerated

the loss of jobs everywhere, but especially in emerging markets. Like in the US and Europe was bad, but in emerging markets, the pandemic accelerated the loss of jobs. Increased inflation and did all that, right? And so what people did more and more during the pandemic with the fear was going out in the streets

and buy cash dollars. Because if you live in Argentina, at the beginning of the pandemic, the Argentina Pesos started to tank and then you get scared, you are risking to lose your job because of the pandemic, you cannot go to work, you go out in the streets,

in the black market, you buy cash dollars. but the kids in 2020 look at their parents going out knowing that there was the pandemic parents putting themselves even more at risk going in the black market with the pandemic and the kids were like Dad why you're going out to buy dollars

I have dollars in this up that's how it all happened that's crazy and it's very ambling but it's how it happened and the charts prove it what apps are they using for this is this kind of like crypto exchange type apps. Are these like, you know,

Metamask wallets, are these just wallets that are connected to Ethereum and Tron? Local exchanges, you know, small, I mean, a variety, like, an infinite number of wallets. Like, we never said, oh, use this wallet, use that wallet. Like, it's truly when people are in need,

that's the issue with Europe and the US in a certain way, right? So, we still live in a situation that is better than anyone else for most of the people. Because we have our problems, but, you know, again, that is far better than anything is relative and we are still better

our economy does far better than anyone else. That's the reality. And so when you are in need, when your family is at risk, when you work from January to December for 12 months and at the end of the year, you're poorer compared to the beginning of the year

because your value your currency devaluated so fast, you will find any possible way to save your family and to protect your family. And that is exactly what happened here. People find, found ways to go out and, or sorry, to

find ways to hold dollars and to have access dollars through local exchanges, through Binance, you name it, but they fund every possible way through the kids, because again, the kids were playing with crypto because they're young kids, they try everything, they know everything, they're small hackers

and growing, right? So they and then word of mouth because one parent goes to the other parents and says, well, you know, we, you know, I did this, I'm testing this, I'm buying dollars on this up and all. And so that's how it went. So how much do you think tether market cap is tied to the total market cap of all of crypto? I mean, there seems like to be some correlation there, right? You know, got massive acceleration up to 2022 and then we had kind of a dip. It didn't go all

the way back down, but slightly and then more acceleration. Is it tied to crypto market cap at all? I honestly, I mean, I think that right now only, less than, I mean, we are running some statistic around that, right? But I think that from what we see around less than 40%, to be conservative, less than 40% of our market cap is due to crypto.

So the RASD is actually grassroots usage of USD in emerging markets. I think that the next leg of growth of the USDT in market cap is commodity trading. Like every single, the biggest commodity traders are pinging us, calling us.

Because for them, USDT is the best thing after it's like spread. Because when you have, you need to do international trades and you are relying on the slowness of banks, the efficiency of capital is very bad

for commodity traders. And now they're looking at USDT as a solution to make their portfolio infinitely more efficient. Because if you're a commodity trader, usually the commodities are both from the emerging markets. So if you are a commodity

trader for you sending us d or a pigeon or whatever is accepted by the the seller is great but you just want to make sure that the seller will receive the money as soon as possible so that you can move on to the next deal so for them for the commodity traders usddd is great for the seller the seller is in the emerging market so we'll get usddt and we'll find a user base for usdddd directly in the market so they can pay salaries in usdt they can do everything in USDT. And so, look at Bolivia. I posted a tweet about Bolivia one week ago or so. You have in Santa Cruz and other villages in cities in Bolivia, like in the shops, there are like the price stats are in USDT. We never went there. We never been there. We never had a person in

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And then now there are investments that make sense that I definitely want to talk about, things like Plasma and Stable, these like Layer 1 chains that are specific for Tether. But then there's also just a bunch of more kind of like eclectic investments that you guys make. There's acquisition offers for basically like a mobile network. telecom networks, on ramps, and just other infrastructure companies. There are energy startups in the Tether portfolio. There's like these media tech companies like for the help creators make content out there. And I believe you guys also own an Italian football team as well.

So there's a bunch of like interesting investments coming out of Tether Ventures. Maybe can I just talk about that strategy going on there? Yes. I mean, the portfolio is big, right? So you have you have to create different verticals. So as any good portfolio, you know, that is again outside the reserves. And for any good portfolio, you have a part that is very conservative and is very stable. So we buy some Bitcoin and gold with that.

But also we started recently to buy land and agricultural companies. So this company called Adecoagro that is listed on the US market, they are the biggest or one of the biggest landowners in South America, between Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. And they are producing also dairy and bi ethanol, but also there is rice and cattle stuff. Why that, right? So first of all, land is a very scarce and safe asset

and historically slowly, slowly appreciates, right? So part of your portfolio you want in something like that, is something that humanity will always need like land and agriculture. But on top of that, you have to think about the fact that, you know, this agriculture is called commodity. Commodity trading could be, you know, what I said about commodity trading and U.S.D can be applied also to agricultural commodities. And so USDT and stable coins in general will

expedite also agricultural companies to have better efficiency when it comes to access to capital, but also when it comes to just payments for the goods that they produce. So that is a very interesting combination between the two things. Then we have another silo that is, new technologies, artificial intelligence, one who are building our own peer-to-peer AI platform called Kuvac. It's going to be insane and very, very cool, really unstoppable AI. I think that the way I like to describe it is like the comparison between when you had the, when I was in the elementary school, you had like the teachers were forcing you to do like calculations by mind, right?

So the sum, the divisions and all that. Then the Casu Calculator started and I don't know now, but, you know, most, of the people that I meet, they might not be able to do simple math in mind. And so, and imagine like that is, so we lost our ability. Many people lost their ability to do in mind the calculations. So imagine if, and because you have a replacement for that, imagine if you have the same thing for intelligence, right? So, so you think less because you have an aid now.

Now, it's fine because that is where the future will go. But what you could say about not your keys, not your coins, you could say also for not your AI, not your intelligence, in a sense that you don't know, if you give all your data to a big corporation that also own your intelligence, that is not becoming more intelligence. It's becoming dumber and making more money

and become to the other company and so that also that company will become more intelligent. So our ability, and given our balance sheet and the fact that we are a very unique company that has the technology capabilities, but also the capital to build whatever they want, we are going to trying to build technology and AI platform that will bring AI closer to the people

so the SIAI platform will brand on every single device can adapt to the GPU of the device working from a $30 smartphone to like a flagship phone to any laptop to any server right we'll just automatically decide which model to use which number weights to use and all that so we've been invested in biotech There is this company called BlackRock NeuroTech

doesn't do anything doesn't have anything to do with BlackRock but to change the name. And the idea is like, to me, brain computer interfaces are very interesting because are the ultimate hedge against the robots killing all of us. So I think that humans will need to become more intelligent

and have, but in order to become intelligent, they need to have a mathematical co-processor in their brain that will not share all their thoughts will open AI, right? So the idea of combining local intelligence plus brain computer interface is very exciting to me. I'm a big sci-fine and nerd. You mentioned football club. Well, yesterday, Juventus won 520 in their first match of the US World Championship for clubs.

So great start. That is an Italian football club. Myself and Giancarlo have been football fans. I mean, the investment compared to our portfolio is not that big. Right. So, but we are football fans for... That one was more for fun. Just a little bit of fun.

Yes. But if you think about it, it could be an insane distribution channel. Juventus fans are everywhere and scatter all over the world. So actually, we could bring more football fans to Juventus through our network. Plus, you know, Juventus network could be beneficial to that or longer term. When you're looking at a potential investment, is distribution the first thing that you kind of evaluate? It's like every investment that you make, distribution is kind of the top of the list of things that you care about. Yeah, exactly that.

I mean, even with AI, the AI platform, I think that I think that AI, we are going to have one trillion AI agency in the next 15 years, and every AI agent should have a non-custodial wallet. I doubt that an AI agent will have an account at the Fed or in JP Morgan, right? So we are building this SDK called WDK's wallet development kit will be fully open source and will allow, like, everyone to build full non-custodial wallets. We don't have any keys. You can create any model you want.

We'll support all the different blockchains. And the idea is that paired with our AI platform, I want basically, I see a user experience where I have my smart fridge, shows me a QR code. The QR code is linked to like an unconstitutional wallet. I give like $50 to my fridge and the fridge will just do crossers for me, right?

So, but I don't want basically my fridge money to be in PayPal, right? So that I don't think is the right experience. It's also because if you have, you know, billions of equipments and even I see a future in 20 years where light bulbs should have a very, very tiny AI that will understand what is the best level of electricity to use and the best lighting for that specific moment in time

in the ambient. And we are going to go there, maybe not in 20 years, maybe in 30 years and 40 years. So that's the reason why we're doing local AI. I don't think that every single light bulb can be connected to chat GPT. We'll crash the servers of chat GPT, the latency will be insane and all that.

So local AI is going to be very important. Plus, giving a wallet to local AI, it's going to be very important. And if you have a stable coin to out to that wallet, it's going to be great. There's a couple of investments that Tether has made that has hit the Zykegeist on the crypto side of things. Plasma stable, there's a bunch of layer ones that are trying to become just Tether-based layer ones.

Notably, fees on Tron have like really cupped up recently. I think the average fee on Tron is something like $4 or $5, which as a payments, blockchain is just not going to work. And so Plasma Sable, like I mentioned, a few others are all trying to be a payment's blockchain that's Tether-specific. And Tether has invested in all these. Are any of these supposed to be the Tether chain? Or how do you think about this like investment into a handful of Tether-specific high-throughput blockchains? There is no Tether chain.

And I don't think there will be ever at other chain. But there are good opportunities and good teams that can build great ecosystems. So I foresee, you mentioned like higher fees in certain chains and, you know, that varies over time. Like sometimes the chain has high fees, sometimes it's low fees. I foresee a future and I never see this user experience and I'm trying to, I want to craft it in some of the wallets. Tether might launch a wallet by the end of the year. We'll want to see. But, well, actually never said it before.

That could be breaking. Might launch a wallet on, you know, a particular crypto network or will it support? No. Many networks? We'll support every network. But one thing that excites me is that we want to launch it with WDK, right? So everyone can actually build a wallet like ours. We don't want to make money with the wallet.

Actually, I would prefer to not launch a wallet, but I want to make sure that there is a good product out there. Right. And imagine a wallet and we are still, I'm still thinking through it because I, you know, again, I never heard of it. Maybe someone else is already doing it. But given that now we have been. working with grassroots community projects like USD0 and similar

USDTZO is a very cool project and they're building this cross-chain cross-chain layers. Imagine a future where you have a wallet or multiple wallets and basically these wallets will use these cross-chain swapping facilities to swap part of the USDT

of a user to the chain that has lower fees. So in a way, you create an incentive for chains to have always lower fees if they won't hire TBL. So that is a level of user experience that I think a tether wallet or WDK, so every wallet that will build on a WDK can enable. And I think it's the best thing for the end user. Because we want to have fair competition across the different chains. We want to see like an ecosystem to grow. And so that's something that, you know, as long as a chain has fair fees and low fees for USDT, that should be

prioritized, in my opinion. So imagine an algorithm that will automatically start converting and moving based on certain factors, user preferences and all that will basically create a preference for a certain chain. We don't decide. I don't want to have to decide. I don't want, I should not be able to decide. Every user should decide which chain is the best for them, right? That's the point. The plasma chain, the one that's kind of really caught the attention of crypto Twitter, it's actually a Bitcoin side chain.

And really before Tether blew up on Ethereum, the supply of Tether blew up on Ethereum, it was actually on Omni. network, which was kind of like the first really expressive chain. And that was also a Bitcoin side chain. And it was a tether dedicated chain really before we as an industry, I'd really figured out blockchain tech. So it's a little bit, kind of like a full circle, like Bitcoin side chain that was tether focused, then Tether issued its stable coin on Ethereum. The supply grew there. Now Tether is all across many different networks and now it's investing in, you know, incubating its own kind of tether chains, one of which is a Bitcoin side chain. What would you say Tether's relationship is with Bitcoin?

Do you guys think Bitcoin is special? Is it just another chain? You guys obviously have reserves in Bitcoin, so you're obviously bullish Bitcoin. Like when you look at Bitcoin, when you think about Bitcoin, what do you think? I love Bitcoin. And we, as a stator, we love Bitcoin. We, you know, it's the reason why we enter in this space.

There is some poetry around how Bitcoin came about. And, you know, the fact that, you know, it's a simple chain, right? But it does what it needs to do. And especially, I love it because, I know that it will work in the worst case scenario. The 10 minutes block time, people say, oh, it's very slow. And it's true, it's very slow. That's why you start having this layer 2s and or like network,

light spark, spark as a blockchain. And all this is similar or like you have plasma and you have other opportunities so that you can, you shouldn't do payments on, in my opinion, even Ethereum is not, you know, aiming to do payments. It understands that there is a bottleneck if you do payments on layer one. right so eventually you need to have scalability layers and it's fine and that's the right approach but the true remote ability of of bitcoin the fact that is my opinion with 10 minutes block time is very is very aligned with tether value in the fact that if you have a 10 minute block time

and around like between one and four megabytes block size even if you are in a village in Africa, you might have the ability to download four minutes in, sorry, four megabytes, well, a few megabytes every 10 minutes, right? So even with an antenna is proven, you know, in the middle of nowhere, you can download the Bitcoin blockchain. If you have a, like, a faster block time, it's much harder for people in the emerging markets cope with that speed. If you think about things like Solana, it's very, very hard for anyone to run a node.

if you are in a not super like connected country. So to me there is something that is very special to Bitcoin because of that is the ultimate inclusion, even in the worst case, and I, even in the World War III. Then I don't, I mean, other blockchains have different use cases, but it's important to distinguish the different use cases. Like for example, Plasma is VM compatible, right? And or like a blockstream liquid is another great Bitcoin side chain.

They are working on simplicity. That is kind of like a touring complete contracting system. So I like innovation that happens also outside of Bitcoin. But that is our first love and actually is very aligned with our mindset. It's also very aligned with your treasury strategy, it seems like. So 100,000 Bitcoin on the tethered treasury. Do you think you'll ever add other crypto assets to that treasury? The problem is that, no, I don't think, well, I don't think we are going to ever add any other assets.

But also, you know, it will be a bad signal. Bitcoin is the only chain that does not have, that does not have controllers in a way, right? So we are not playing favorites if we have only Bitcoin. If we start adding like chains where there are like foundations behind the chains and all that feels like we are playing favorites. So for us, we stay out of trouble, just Bitcoin. You know, it's easy enough.

It's simple. clean, that's what we like. How about Bitcoin mining? I believe Tether is investing in that area as well. Can you get us updated on that? Yeah, I think that is set to become probably, you know, the biggest miner in the world at the end of this year. Wait, wait, the biggest miner as well?

So Tether's going to have the biggest Bitcoin miner in the world? Yes. So there isn't why we do. So there is this thing about Bitcoin, Bitcoin mining, right? So if you have an X-a-Minders, amount of money to invest. You have to, and imagine you have to choose if to invest in Bitcoin mining

or buying Bitcoin. 99% of the time you will make more revenues, more profits if you invest directly in Bitcoin rather than doing Bitcoin mining. So why the hell we are doing Bitcoin mining is because if you have hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin,

you want to have or you want to participate to the security of the network because this is in a way you are protecting your treasury to participate into the to the solidity to the security of the network. So there is an incentive to do that if you have a huge, you know. You'll be the most aligned actor, minor of the Bitcoin network. Because there are like some people, myself included, I would say,

are they're considering the security risks of Bitcoin when the subsidy runs out. But I think what you're saying is like, well, if we own the biggest miner and we hold over 100,000 Bitcoin, then we will make sure that the Bitcoin network operates just because we hold a lot of Bitcoin. Yes, that is something. And we are trying to decentralize it. We have operations in South America, in like many different countries. Of course, also in the US.

We are investing in the US Bitcoin mining. Again, we really believe that in the importance of the US, especially in this particular monument in time, right? So we feel like we need to be helpful and we need to contribute back. At the same time, for Bitcoin, is important to have a strong, strong support also from the mining side.

What I believe what will happen is that when the profitability of so when the block reward will go towards zero, what will happen is that fees on chain will skyrocket and I believe that basically what Bitcoin will

the Bitcoin main chain will be a settlement layer for lightning style channels or for basically very important contracts that will behind the scenes will incorporate an enormous amount of of operations. If you think about now

like a liking channel, you have basically the two sides open to a Bitcoin transaction on layer one, like on the native Bitcoin chain. And after they did that initial transaction, they have a direct channel

between themselves. They can send a gazillion transactions on the layer two. And then eventually they can decide to then settle back on layer one. That's when they're going to pay fees. So if you did, of course, if every time you do a payment

you pay, $500 in a fee, it's like you scream. Like it's like you want to break your laptop. But if you pay $500 for a transaction, but that is actually the sum of one billion transactions, you might say, I got access to the most secure network in the world. So you divide one billion transaction,

divide the $500 is not that much, right? So that in a certain way, I think that is the kind of one of the most beautiful dynamics. And we'll see how it will play out. but the more new layers will happen or the more new application will happen on Bitcoin, they will all happen on different layers. And so these layers will just anchor to Bitcoin.

So Bitcoin will become just a security layer for anchored, for everything else and as simple as that. Would not be used for transactions. Let's talk about another very traditional asset, which is just not the digital gold, but the actual gold gold gold, which is kind of a use case that's been around for a while, but seems to be increasing.

And maybe you can update us on the stats, but I was looking, there's almost $2 billion worth of tokenized gold on chain, of which I think tether's close to 50% of that. That's been like creeping up in the background. I guess, you know, gold price is appreciated, so that is a contributing factor, but it does seem like the demand is there too.

What's the story of tokenized gold, do you think, and how big could this get? I think that tokenized gold is going to be massive, right? And in the last year, we saw a huge interest, additionally interesting in the product. Tether, compared to the other stable coin, gold stable coins, has physical gold in its own controlled volts. And so, you know, the interest of having, you know, a gold stable coin is because you want to have a hedge against, you know, many things, including potential crash in the financial markets. And you never know if the paper gold is fully backed. you know, you have to trust the system.

And I think that not your vault, not your gold, is a pretty sensible approach. So Tether, between the gold stable coin and our own gold as Tadder, we have around 80 tons of physical gold. Wow. Okay, so you both hold gold on the treasury. I think I saw estimates of that that's about 50 tons of gold or so, maybe on the treasury. No, now it's 80, around 80. That's 80 total. 80 total.

And then there's also this tokenized gold product. For people who aren't familiar with tokenized gold and the way Tether does it, what exactly is it? Because obviously it's a tokenized version, so it's an IOU for some gold that exists somewhere. But you're saying in Tether's case, Tether actually owns the vault and kind of controls it. What is this product for people who aren't familiar? Most of the biggest big gold bars are like around 400 ounces. They are like around 12.5 kilos.

So we basically for every bar that we have, we generate XOT tokens, that are gold tokens. So for every ounce of that gold bar. So you have like 400 ounces or like 399 ounces, for example, a gold bar. We generate 399 tokens up to six decimals, right, of both precision. So for every bar, we buy the bar, we store it in the vault we control. It's in Switzerland. and in basically, I think, the safest country

and the safest place in the world for gold storage. And we tokenize it and we make it available. So people can actually redeem. Actually, they already happen. People can redeem if you have enough gold tokens for one full bar. You can come to Switzerland and you get your own gold bar.

Really? So you can redeem the actual token, the tethered tokenized gold for actual gold bars in person physically. Yes, you have to have, of course, the full bar. Sure, sure. The full, enough ounces for it to cover the full bar. But yes. Then, yes.

We are not going to sow your bar. You don't do fractional bars? No fractional bars, David. You got to buy full bar. If you want it physically, but tokenized, it could be very fractional, I assume. Yes, exactly. That's fantastic. Very cool product.

Any other tokenized asset that you left for gold? You're going after property next, real estate, something? No, the problem with oil or silver. Like, think about silver would take 100 times the space because it's 100 times less valuable. So, you know, it's going to becoming a huge operation. I mean, if you have 80 tons of gold, it's not that big.

It's really not that big. Can stay in a small room. But, like, if you have, like, $10 billion of silver, good luck with that. Well, what is that stat? All the gold in the world is an Olympic size swimming pool, full, basically. So, I mean, that's not all. that much. All you need is a vault, the size of an Olympic swimming pool, and Tether can have all

the world's cold if you guys get there. Yeah. Well, this has been great, Pallow. I think people are really understanding the size of Tether and the scope of your ambitions and all the ways that you're involved. I want to go back to this thread that you mentioned, which is the Genius Act, full circle. So you said that the Genius Act in the U.S. could be a template for countries all around the world. I haven't actually kept up with the latest kind of crypto-staplecoin legislation in Europe. the Mika type stuff and what's going on there. Like, how's that going? And do you think Genius Act, the principles and ideas behind genius will filter into Europe?

Where do you think we go from here and the rest of the world? I wish that the, you know, I'm European and I'm allowed to say, you know, true things about Europe. And so the problem with Mika license is that it requires 60% minimum, 60% of assets in an insure cash deposits in a bank. Means that in the U.S., the insurance of deposits $250,000 and in Europe is 100,000 euros. You know, think about, again,

Silicon Valley Bank, 2003, our main competitor, had an issue because the bank went bankrupt while having an insurer cash deposits in the bank, around $3.3 billion. Imagine having 60% of an insured cash deposit if you are a stable coin. That is very bad.

We argued, before the MECA became low, that you should have 100% in treasuries. So that's why the genius act gets his right. You need its much more solid requirement because it requires basically, or well, if you want, if you are like a stable coin, you should be able to get 100% in treasuries

or 90%. But I don't want to have 40% treasuries. That would make my product weaker. And actually, what the Mika license says, that is that you cannot have, like, you need also, you need to diversify a lot in corporate bonds, sorry, in government bonds that you can buy in Europe. Like, in Europe, you don't have, you cannot count on too many fingers, the strong countries that have good treasuries. You know, not all the countries in Europe, and, well, they are all very far from being

the United States and have very good treasuries. wants. So what I aim and what I hope, well, more than aim, is to see like more the Genius Act becoming the template maybe will push Europe to change the requirements. Because in a certain way, I think that Europe might not be a comparable regime to United States if they keep these requirements of minimum 60% in an insure cash deposits. But everything else, everywhere else, I think they will mimic what the US is doing. Maybe they will change a little bit. Someone will say 90%, someone will say you have a slight lower composition of us.

But they all will take the US genius act as a template and will make, you know, they will try to get this comparable approach. Paulo, when it comes to the euro, though, and a euro staple coin itself, outside of the dollar kind of backed stable coin, do you think Europe is. going more in the direction of a, you know, sort of a EU central bank digital currency rather than the US direction, which is like, hey, we're just going to let private industry kind of roll out our stable coins. That seems to be the direction maybe they're taking, though. It's hard to tell. Sometimes the EU is very, very opaque on like what's going on inside.

I think that they want to do full on CBDC, which is not great in my opinion. So first of all, the EU is scared of dollar stable coins. So they want to limit the, the circulation as much as they can because, you know, they fear the uptake of the US dollar against the euro. The thing of, if you go outside the United States, you stop 1,000 people in the streets, you ask them, would you prefer your national currency or the dollar?

Everyone will say, not even one person will say, I want my national currency. Everyone will say, I want the US dollar. Go outside Europe and ask, stop 1,000 people and ask them, would you prefer the euro or your national currency? people don't know what is the euro outside of Europe and they would prefer their national currency. So not even Europeans won the euro.

So imagine the others. And so in my opinion, you know, the Europe is doing, you know, trying to do protectionism to their currency. Might be fair. But I am not big fun of having a central bank digital currency because I think that what happens now with the credit cards and debit cards,

there is a layer between yourself when you spend the money and the state. So the bank, the intermediary act as a middleman. So the state cannot track you or geolocate every single transaction that you do. Like you spend the digital euro in a bar in Milan and the central bank would know it. That is too much in my opinion.

And we have seen sometimes the Europe is going crazy and deciding that free speech is not. not an option anymore and should be reduced and all that. So it's like if you control the money of people, you know, you might eventually use that power to seek obedience. Paulo, this has been great. I'm wondering if you just leave us with this in summary as we close out.

So, I mean, Tether has had kind of a lot of narrative ups and downs, let's say, with the U.S. government, right? There are times when Tether's been criticized in all sorts of ways. It's also even had its ups and downs in crypto. I mean, there's been a lot of narrative flood about, you know, Tether in the past. I feel like this is almost 2025 is sort of a redemption a year for Tether. It feels like none of that flood is happening these days. Even U.S. lawmakers are recognizing like what Tether is, how big it is, and the value it's

bringing to the U.S. Treasury bond market. I want you to summarize this. Why is Tether, in your words, good for the U.S., and why is it good for crypto? So, Tether is good for the United States because, first of all, we are bringing financial inclusion through the U.S. dollar to hundreds of millions of people. There were charities and NGOs that raise a lot of money from everywhere else in the world and everywhere in the world to try to solve financial inclusion. A small company like Tatter was able to bring financial inclusion to almost 500, half a billion people. And we are doing that with the U.S. dollar. Second, we are spreading with that

the US dollar gemony. So when you have China, when you have all the other BRICS countries trying to undermine the US dollar germany, we are helping, we are actually the company that is helping the US the most out there. When we are, we are in Africa,

when we are in Central South America, you don't see the presence of the United States much, but you see the present of the BRICS countries that are trying to undermine the US dollar and you see the presence of Tether with millions of touch points. are trying to push back and we are pushing back and we're making the dollar the preferred

currency, the most use currency there in these countries. And third, we are the biggest, well, among the biggest purchasers of US treasuries and US debt. And I think that when you have China that is using, that is selling, three years ago China had $2,000 of

US debt and now has less than $700 billion and could use that as a weapon against the United States. You want to decentralize the ownership of the US debt, as I said. And we are helping the United States through that. We think we're doing a good job. I think the Genius Act will help us to continue to do so in a stronger way.

And we are invested in the United States. As I said, we invested a lot of the portion of our profits back in the United States, support very good companies in the United States. So I think that there is a very strong alignment between Tether and the United States. We keep our treasuries in the United States, not in a random European bank. everything that we do ties back to the United States. So I think we are doing a good job.

When it comes to crypto, it's funny because, yes, there was a lot of fad. But, you know, if you bring back the chart, you could see that, you know, fad is one thing, but facts are different, right? So the chart is pretty much growing all the time. There you go. Paulo, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been fantastic. Thank you very much for your time and for the opportunity.

Thank you, guys. Heather, taking the U.S. dollar to everywhere banks in the U.S. can't go. Got to let you know, Bankless Nation, of course. None of this has been financial advice. Crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in, but not on stable coins. We're headed west. This is the frontier.

It's not for everyone. But we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.