On The Brink with Castle Island - Paolo Ardoino (Tether) on stablecoin bills, pursuing an audit, and getting to 400m users (EP.606)

Episode Date: March 26, 2025

Paolo Ardoino, the CEO of Tether, rejoins the show for a timely discussion. In this episode: How is Paolo feeling about political trends in the US today? Tether is the 7th-largest buyer of USTs at the sovereign level Paolo's decision to spend more time in the US What does Paolo make of the stablecoin bills in Congress? Does Tether want to eventually come onshore to the US? Tether is pursuing a Big 4 Audit The effect of Operation Choke Point 2.0 on Tether Tether is moving their HQ to El Salvador Paolo's thoughts on stablecoins in MiCA How does Tether get to the figure of 400m global users of the stablecoin? Tether's efforts to better understand their userbase and usage modes Tether's methodology around balance sheet investing Is Paolo concerned about crypto-dollarization? Tether's relationship with Cantor now that Lutnick is Commerce Secretary Is Paolo concerned about the emergence of interest-bearing stablecoins? See also: On The Brink ep.87: Paolo Ardoino (Bitfinex/Tether) – Managing the growth of Tether (June 2020)

Hello and welcome back to On the Brink. I'm Nick Carter. Today we're sitting down with Palo Arduino, the CEO of Tether. This is actually his second episode on the show I'd forgotten. We interviewed him before. That was in June 2020, almost five years ago. That episode was called Managing the Growth of Tether. At that time, the supply of Tether was about $9 billion. Today it's $143 billion. I think they've managed the growth okay. Obviously, such a pleasure to have Palo on the show. He doesn't do it. that many public appearances. We cover a lot of terrain in this episode. Palo has visited the U.S. recently. He's coming on to share his views on the stable coin bills making their way through Congress, and we discuss whether they want to eventually come unsure in the U.S. It was also reported today that

Tether is pursuing a Big Four audit. We talk about that and why they were unable to do that in the past. We talk about their move to El Salvador. And Tether's desire to be more public-facing showcasing some of the data and the usage of the, what they estimate is 400 million global users of the stable coin. This is a great wide-ranging conversation. I'm really glad Palo came on. Let's dive right into it. Today we have very special guest, Palo Ardoino from Tether. Very, very excited, obviously timely conversation. Lots of news items around Tether breaking, including today, the announcement that you guys are pursuing a big four audit. Palo, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you for having Munich. It's a big pleasure.

So there's so much to talk about it. I don't even know where to start. Yesterday, Trump spoke at the Digital Asset Summit, or I don't know, DAS in New York. And he said, quote, dollar-backed stable coins will help expand the dominance of the dollar for many years to come. It'll be at the top and that's where we want to keep it. It also came out yesterday. You tweeted, Tether was the seventh largest sovereign buyer of UST bills in 2024 with 33 billion of purchases. How are you feeling generally about? where Tether is today and the political environment in D.C.

All right. There is a lot to unpack there. So I want to point out yesterday, I think, was two, my tweet was too short. But if you think, if you take the image that they posted yesterday and you look at the first three, the top three were Cayman, Luxembourg, and then you had UK, I think, fifth or six. But Cayman and Luxembourg, they host a lot of hedge funds. So when you see those numbers, you actually need to discount the fragmentation of the different hedge funds. So I believe that actually if you were looking at real numbers,

that would be top three buyer of US treasuries in 2024. And on the rear end, you could see China and Japan for different reasons they have been selling US treasuries. Japan, of course, they need to support their national currency that is not doing very, very well. And China, I think there is a clear interest in the dollarization in the world and selling TBL's potential is being used as a weapon, like a financial weapon. They have still, I think, $770 billion to go in U.S. Treasury. So I think, you know, I, when also I went in D.C. recently, I made of this point a very important part of my discussion. I believe that there is going to be, and I'm pretty proud because I created this term. Everyone knows about the deep seek moment for artificial intelligence.

That was a clear, I think it's beautiful to use that analogy because we saw how to. Trump announced $500 billion in investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure one day, and then very next day, China came out with the deep seek. And so clearly they didn't develop, they didn't finish the V1 the next day, very, very, I think, would be very timely. But I think that they had in the pocket that they decided to announce it in a very specific moment. So what I think is going to happen is potentially a deep seek moment for the US dollar, And that I think is what we should be prepared for.

And so when Tether builds and builds for the last 10 years, the biggest distribution network for the US dollar, physical distribution network and digital distribution network, we can enter in the details later about that. But so when we did that, we and while we are doing it, when we are in Africa, when we're in Central South America, in these places, in most of the time, there is Tether and then there is China, right?

So the China is building highways, schools, hospitals, stadiums. There is no US presence in Africa. There is no almost U.S. presence in Central and South America. There is a lot of China. And so there is definitely, I think, the will from the BRICS countries to build infrastructure to, you know, physically infrastructure, and then eventually launch an attack to the US dollar and more heavy attack to the US dollar to the dollarize the world. And I think that is going to be, it will happen.

First, the BRICS country is trying to create a digital currency backed by a bunch of national currencies. I think that quickly realized that it was not possible because they don't trust each other with their national currencies. But then what they realized that many people would like a digital currency backed by gold. So if you see the gold price today and what happened in the last and the clear information that everyone has of China and India and other national banks buying a lot of gold, I think that they are preparing for that and that they are preparing for a gold-backed stable coin but run by the brakes. and let me know if I'm saying the white part allowed, but I think is very, I think will happen by 2025 or 2006.

So when I'm D.C. and I'm explaining what we are doing instead of, and why we are, the fact that we have 400 million people using our product and effectively using US dollar, we are buying back the T-bills and all that, then the I mean, basically what I'm also saying is like, is,

is that it's not easy, for us, right? Well, we are a simple company or building this distribution network. And to us, the importance of the stable coin bill is not simply about, you know, just making, you know, a regulation on a new technology is, in my opinion, a matter of national security. And that's how it should be treated. And there is a huge difference between and the other part that I explain is that there is a huge difference about rightfully so, lawmakers in the US are looking at stable coins as something that should be used domestically, right? Their first interest is regulating stable coins on the US soil because, you know, that for customer

protection and all that, that is completely fine. But I think it's not correct to think that the same product that works in the US where you have at high competition through all the possible payments means will work outside the US in Africa and Central South America and so on. So there has to be a concept of a foreign stable coin that operates mostly internationally, that can be accessed on the secondary markets everywhere, but does not issue to US people because it's focusing on all the emerging markets and also a very domestic stable coin that focuses on the US market,

because that is mostly institutional and based and focus. and also will focus on servicing or competing with the PayPal and Zelle and cash up of the world. So that is the message that I'm trying to give and explain. I think in January works, is working because people understand the importance now of stable coins. Without the data points that we have, it's very hard to understand the importance of stable points, not only USD, but USAT is the biggest one out there in the emerging markets to fight in the industry. streets, right? So we never talk to any institution outside the US. We don't go to institutions in Brazil. We don't go to institutions in Central Asia. But we go in the streets, right? We build

our adoption from the ground up. We knock door by door almost. That's how we build these crazy numbers. Paulo, you know, we haven't seen you in the US much before. I mean, I think it's it's a clear sign that you're showing up to Washington to make your case. Are you happy with what you've seen from the bills that are making their way through Congress and we have the House and the Senate, they're a little bit different, they're changing. Are you generally happy with what you're seeing or what you want to see from this legislation, assuming it passes? So I think the Senate bill is quite interesting.

I think it captures the importance of stable coins that. operate internationally that, you know, they are very much anyway under U.S. scrutiny because and will remain under U.S. scrutiny because they would need, based on this bill, to abide to U.S. law enforcement requests and regulations. So that I think is very important. We follow U.S. laws and regulations when it comes to phrasing. We work. I think we are the only stable coin, including the US stable coins that onboarded the FBI, US Secret Services, we worked with the DOJ almost daily and the Treasury. And on the other side allows for domestic stable coins that are thought to basically focus on the

US markets. And it makes sense on the House bill that is still, I'm. I think a draft discussion. I'm a little bit less familiar, but I think that the Senate bill is moving fast and has, I think, is very well thought. And now I believe the parent company is based in the BVI, and I know that you obviously have affiliations worldwide, Switzerland, El Salvador.

I want to talk about that in a second. Is it your intent or desire to one day have some operations in the U.S. or even ultimately onshore the business into the U.S.? That's a very good question. So I think that Tether International, the international stable coin should remain international just because it makes, you know, does not, is not suited to be a competitor to PayPal, for example, but definitely given, and we are going to watch the bill for the requirements of the, for US domestic stable coins, and we would be open to create a domestic stable coins.

we would be open to create a domestic stable coin in the US because we still have we I believe that we have the best technology also for the US but would be clearly a different business model and so we would need to do a bit of research and understand how we can play in the US that is a market that we never played into and but that is very exciting it sounds very exciting but nevertheless both the international stable coin and the domestic stable coin would go through um um um a full audit. That's why we hired the new CFO that you mentioned. Simon has incredible experience. He went through multiple contentious full audits. I say, I mean, the Tether one should not be contentious. I mean, our balance sheet is very easy. Nevertheless, when you have Senator Warren

and, you know, Operation Chalk Point 2.0 and a big four auditors are discouraged to take on crypto customers. That's not easy. I would call that contentious. So now I think we are in a good place. I think that, you know, the audit will remain and is top of our priority list. But now with the change of administration in the US, that change demonstrated and signaled to the big four auditing firms, that is okay to work with the crypto firms. And so we are already seeing that change with much more openness towards us. Yeah, this is, I'm really glad you brought this up. So first of all, I mean, I'm not going to speak too soon, but congrats.

I mean, I think a lot of people have been waiting for the big four to be willing to engage with you. And no one talks about the fact that there is this political campaign against the audit firms via the audit regulators in the U.S. Warren had a campaign against the PCAOB and the AI CPA to get them to dissuade the audit firms from dealing with crypto firms. So this is like the audit version of chokepoint, you know? So like chokepoint was bank regulators and banks. This is audit regulators and auditors. And I think people don't understand this is one of the reasons why it was hard to get an audit. The politicians in Washington didn't want the audit firms deal with crypto firms.

So you're saying you've noticed a real shift in attitude since the new admin. Yeah. And by way, thank you for everything that you have been doing to highlight Operation Chokepoint 2.0, because definitely that was a well-thought attack to the entire industry, right? As you said, it was not just for the banks and the correspondent banks, but was an entire attack also from multiple angles. So it was very hard to combat for companies that are like nationed companies like in a nation industry like the crypto industry.

So yeah, I think we are seeing a change. we have seen a shift because also most of the big four auditing firms the leading team is in the US, right? So if you have an administration in the US that tells you, well, you should not deal with crypto, then it's very hard to change their minds. But something is moving and I'm very pleased see that. Yeah, I'm very excited as well. Now, in terms of El Salvador, I mean, you made a very interesting announcer recently. I think you said you'd be moving the headquarters there. You will have some base of operations there. Can you say more about that and how that even came to be? Yeah, Al Salvador is a great place. First of all, is a beautiful country run by a

president and the government that demonstrated their ability to push change and make the country, probably now one of the best countries in Central and South America believing is definitely the safest country in Central and South America while it was actually the safest country in the Americas while it was the murder capital of the world. So on top of that, they have been supporting Bitcoin really early on since 2021. We went through all the process there to and helped with Bitcoin support.

But also they are the first country that started support and understand very well digital assets in general and broader. And also they created a digital asset law that is very thorough but well thought. And also they added recently, well, one year and a half ago, they added a stable coin low. By the way, they are the first country creating a very thorough and sensible stable coin low. is much better than Mika. I've been very vocal against Mika just because I believe that it's going to create systemic risks in

European banks. Because if Mika, for a big stable coin like Tatter, would force 60% of reserves in an insurer cash deposit. I think it's a very bad idea. We saw what happened with a competitor that had some money in Silicon Valley Bank

that was in an insured cash deposit. Imagine having 60% of that. So it's not, and one of the things that I'm telling to and I'm trying to advocate for is to have a stronger requirement when it comes to US treasuries or any way in Europe, one requirement could have been pick the top four economies and buy government bonds from those top four economies. That would have made sense, but actually keeping 60% in an insurer cash deposits is a very bad idea. And on top of that, now they want to, a couple of days ago, I saw the press release about their interest in doing the digital euro. Sorry if I'm sidetracking here, but clearly Europe is, in that press release, they said that the digital euro for them is a way to prevent foreign stable coins, foreign currency. is stable coins to eat up the market for euro.

And, you know, my opinion, you know, the euro as a currency is dying and not because of the USDT is dying because, you know, in Europe doing business is almost impossible. And, you know, the GDP of Europe was cut in half compared to 20 years ago compared to the US economy. So long story short, Alessadour is the first country that has a sensible stable, stable coin legislation, all the other places, either you have Europe that, as I said, I rented five minutes about it, or you have sandboxes in other places, but sandbox is not helpful for Tatar, given the size. And now your engagement with El Salvador, is this just your sort of physically domiciling some

operations there? Like, how deep does that go? You know, will you be employing locals as part of Tether? Will you be changing your registration? You know, what is. that look like yeah definitely we are we are hiring people there we have our headquarters we are renting our office but we are building a tower um i think it's um to us makes sense like some people ask me oh why not why not the us right but again we work in the merchant markets developing countries so we need elsewhere for us is the door to center on south america we base so when we designed the working model of USDT. We designed based on the person, the family stories of our employees. So we have people coming from 70 different countries now, well, 60 different

countries. And, you know, we, every one of these people have different problems with, they saw different problems in their countries with their families. So that is exactly how we design USDT. So for us, that does not make any sense to be in Wall Street. We should be. you know, in the trenches with our own people. So you mentioned 400 million tether users. I was looking on chain. I don't know where I think I might have heard you say that on a different show as well. I looked on chain yesterday.

I could find around 100 million addresses. I know an address is not a person, of course, and people have accounts at exchanges, and so it's not a one-to-one mapping. But is this a study that you've done? Like, how are you, can you give us a sense of where you're getting this data from? Yes, I think we had, our chief economist, that was Philip Gradwell, was at Chain Analysis First. Now it came to us. A published a few couple months ago published the first analysis on how we calculate the number of users.

So there is a very high activity on on blockchains across all the different blockchains and bridges. And of course, we also count addresses that receive some USAT and then keep it for 24 hours and they send it. So not every single address has to have USAT all the time, but they need to have USAT most of the time, right? Or at least a certain number of times per month. Plus, we have good contacts with many exchanges, centralized exchanges. Unfortunately, no custodial holding of crypto is still not very popular. I believe that we should work hard to improve that. Just for multiple reasons, right, the matter of reduced trust on exchanges, a bit more responsibility.

But, you know, most of the reason is that most of the reason why people don't do that is because UX sucks. So we want to try and to change that. We might be able to prove this change in the next year or so. We are going to launch few products around this concept. But going back, there are still what we're seeing, there is an enormous amount of people that use USDT only on exchanges. They don't want to hear what is a blockchain. They don't care what is a blockchain. If they want just to use peer-to-peer trading on Binance and some other exchanges, they want just to, if you are in Buenos Aires, you are like in, you want just to, you have finance pay or Bifinex pay.

You accept the payment. It goes to your account, and you pay another person in Bitfinex or Binance through that in your ecosystem. Through the account, there is no blockchain transaction, all that. But when we inquiry the different centralized exchanges, we get incredible numbers out of in terms of user base of Tatters. So it's a mix of. There is a lot of how we calculate a lot of on-chain activity, but also there is a huge amount of, you know, USDP permits almost entirely all the different cryptocurrencies exchanges.

Plus, you have to sum all the different smaller exchanges that are like very local, like the Turkish one, the Argentinians ones and all that. So we try to collect all the information from many. And we discounted that. Actually, we discounted the number a lot because we assume that there is some overlapping between different exchanges.

That's very interesting. Thank you. And Philip is an amazing guy. did great work at chain analysis. So that's a great hire you've made. Do you plan on diving deeper into the data to understand geographic segmentation of users or usage modes by typology?

I mean, I get asked this all the time. Aren't stable coins just for trading? Like, what's the real world usage? Do you plan on diving into this kind of data? This is exactly what Philip is going to do. He is building, he put together a massive, data warehouse is in progress still right so but he's uh he's building an incredible data warehouse i i was talking to few people uh very high profile people in the last couple of weeks we showed just

the first version of the dashboard that we have at tether to understand how is being used and all that they never seen some anything like that um it's and it's again it's just the beginning it's as a you know it's a fairly expensive endeavor, but I think we'll pay off because there is not super precise information, of course, because blockchain is not perfect for that, but you can derive the more now we are connecting chain analysis and probably other 15 different vendors, and we are building our own heuristics, and the level of details that we're going to get, now already is almost insane, but the level of details that we are going to get in the next six to nine months. is going to be out of our minds.

Yeah, I mean, as a stablecoin nerd and a data nerd, I couldn't be more excited. So whenever you're ready, please Sunday my way. I love that. I love that. I'm getting very excited to just listen to you. I'm talking about the balance sheet investments. So, you know, Tether has made a lot of very interesting investments, not just, you know, in crypto, obviously, a whole lot of Bitcoin, but AI, brain computer interfaces, a rumble.

the video company, agricultural companies, I think it was reported Juventus, the soccer team. Is there a common thread in terms of the balance sheet investments to others making or is just is there just a purely financial approach or, you know, how do you think about that? So when we say balance sheet, I want to clarify that is outside the reserves, all the investment in these companies. So the rights, we have a different allocation. So we made around $20, something billion in the last couple of years, two, three years. So there is a different approach between, we have different categories.

So there is the more long-term strategic investment, very low yield return, but very strong is Adeco-Agro, agriculture investment. The company has a lot of land. So I believe that is very strategic. And almost like stable coins and land, gold, Bitcoin, to me are part of the same story. You know, we have stable coins, we have gold, we have Bitcoin. You have to live somewhere. Like land is going to be quite important.

I believe it's something that will be important forever. then so that is a particular category I would say gold and Bitcoin we are gold bugs and Bitcoin bugs so clear we started you know we accrued I think around 50 tons of gold over the last well especially between 2020 2020 was very not good buy good average price. So, yes. So before every single Briggs country started to buy. So, you know, now they're pushing our bags of gold. These investments in private companies and other commodities, is there a strategic rationale like with Tether or is it just, you want to diversify, you don't just hold cash? There is. So there is. So I talk about almost everything that is mostly either like

long-term or it has been like fewer investment and hedge. But everything else, for example, Rumble, I think Rumble will is set to become one of the most important companies in the U.S. economy when it comes to social media and streaming. So they are very bullish on Rumble. And plus Rumble is set to, you know, Chris Pavlovsky is a big supporter of Bitcoin. They add the Bitcoin to their balance sheet. And so just imagine if they had more than 70 million users and they have basically almost the entire wealthy America as subscriber to Rumble. So imagine so Rumble sold around $853 million dollars worth of gold between 2023 to 2004.

Imagine what a Rumble wallet could be with Bitcoin inside. And stable coins inside. So to me, Rumble is perfectly set to become, to bridge a clear web to company to a more modern approach to create an ecosystem that provide services that are social media services, but also add as part of the ecosystem also the concept of money. So I'm very bullish on that. Also part of the balance sheet, when it comes to, for example, Northern Data, artificial intelligence investment is one of our biggest investments. The opportunity there is just massive. It's, you know, it is very profitable. We entered the game, you know, before that, then almost anyone else. So is already a very profitable business. And on top of that, Tatter is building, has a very strong AI team. We count around 60 people now.

and we are building our own models and we are building our own own inference, peer-to-peer inference platform. So I'm very excited about that specifically. Then

most of the rest of the investments, we invested in more than 90 portfolio companies is actually to build the biggest distribution network for US dollar. So actually, most of our effort is exactly that. So a few days ago, I posted a couple of weeks ago, I posted about our approach to Africa

where we build kiosks with solar panels on top and there are batteries inside with rechargeable batteries, 140 watt per battery. And we sell subscriptions to the service for three USDT per battery, month. For 3 USB T per month you get four battery swaps. We have more than 300 or almost 500 kiosks now. We are scaling up to 10,000 kiosks in Africa now that we prove the concept in the next year and a half. We have already, with 3,500 kiosks, we have already hundreds

of thousands of customers. And we perform more than 10 million swaps, I believe, in the last, just in the last year. So the concept is great, because first of all, in Africa, you have 600 million people that don't have energy at home, but still they have flip phones or cheap smartphones. They have a small TV, maybe, and a few things like that, and of course, light bulbs and things like that, right, and the fridge. So these batteries can actually power some small machinery. with 140 volts. So it's very cool because it is a change if we are successful.

And our plan is in five years to have around 200,000 of these kiosks, so if we can scale very well. So first of all, is a change that you can see from space because you can light the continent. If you ever saw Africa from space, it's very, very dark. And on top of that, all this economy will run on the USAT. So we believe that we can bring on only in Africa, you know, 50, 60 million new USDT users and created one of the biggest economies around the US dollar in Africa. So that is very unique as an approach.

But this is one company. We have another 89 to go over that are doing other things, but with the similar ethos and philosophy. Like how we can either there are digital businesses or there are physical businesses like bodegas in Central South America. we have a network of hundreds of thousands of bodegas that are all dealing with USDT. That is one of the reasons why it's not easy to displace USDT in emerging markets just because it's not, it's not, I don't mean to be rude, but it's not a Silivocon Valley game. This is like being in the trenches and building like, you know, every day you wake up and you gain one meter, in the street and you get you get people adoption.

So while in the last 20 years with the concept of globalization, most of the investors were pushing companies that had the physical distribution networks, were pushing these companies to sell the physical distribution network and rent it back because it was a center of cost. What we have been doing was the complete opposite. we started buying physical distribution networks to ensure our presence on every single territory. Do you worry about, I mean, you know, you're going from zero users to 400 million in under a decade.

Do you worry about being too successful about crypto dollarization in some of these countries and emerging markets and, you know, being blamed for inflation in the local currency, things like that? I think Millet is a very, well, he had some problems recently, but was on a very right track before that. And he understands very well that the problem, the success of the US dollar is not because of the success of the US dollar. I mean, if the Argentina pays of was perfect, you know, people would not use the US dollar in Argentina. So if you don't fix the country, sure, you can blame everyone. it's easy to blame everyone else for your fault. But clearly if there is a problem in the local economy,

and what usually is happening is that the independent from the US dollar, what central banks do in the emerging markets is they print their own currency and use it to buy back dollars on the public markets to defend their effects rate, but, you know, they are trying to do the same. They're just basically trying to defend an FX that is impossible to defend. The beauty in finance is that financial markets are cannot be drugged. If you try to change the rules or you try to, you know, inflate or move something in a forced way in a direction, it's physics. Financial markets are purely driven by physics. So you cannot game them. You cannot you cannot trip them. Eventually they will go in the

direction. There will be always a natural force to go in the right direction that were where they were supposed to go in the first place. So point in being is that until you fix the economy, you can blame everyone, but you know, you have first to fix the economy. So obviously it's well reported. You guys have a relationship with Canter, Fitzgerald. They manage a lot of your treasuries. Obviously, Howard Lutnik is now the Commerce Secretary. Has anything changed with your relationship with them since he came into office? Is he more hands off now, or do you still have a good relationship with the guy? We don't have any more direct relationships with Howard, because now is in office and also

has more important things to do. And on the other side, we have still a great relationship with counter, and we still keep the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of all. our treasuries in counterfeit Gerald. We need, given the size of that we need the primary dealer, we need someone that also offers like overnight reverse repos and a very liquid repo book and access to, you know, basically direct access to the Fed, right?

So that is super important to us and so we're very grateful for the relationship also because they looked at Tether and they took their time to do their due diligence on Tether, even during Operation Shockpoint 2.0. So we were very respectful and grateful to the people that helped us when the entire former administration wanted to kill our industry. Last question, I think for now. On business model of stable coins, you know,

there is this new sector of interest bearing. And I know the legislation in the U.S. pending legislation has some language around not permitting interest bearing stable coins, so maybe it won't be relevant here. But we offshore, there's this notion of paying interest. Tether, of course, does not pay interest to its users still grown very, very well in recent years. Do you feel any disruption in the core stablecoin business model from the emergence of interest-bearing stables? I don't for multiple reasons.

First of all, okay, let me change my answer. For the U.S. market, I think it will be tricky because in the U.S., people, now are under all the biggest table coins in the U.S. market are paying interest. They can call it in a different way, but oh, they are paying interest. Now, the main disruption could

happen to them. Now, it's quite interesting because what will happen if they have to stop paying the interest. So where their market cap will go? That will be a very interesting question. Outside the U.S.,

if you go in Argentina, where they're intraday volatility over there, Genfino, peso, is more than 4%, probably, or at least on a weekly basis, definitely more than 4%. If you give them 4% per year, it's not very exciting. They just want to know that they have a dollar for them. They transition from having to buy cash bills in the streets to have the same thing about on a smartphone. So they're very happy without having the interest. Of course, if you talk to a rich Argentinian, that can buy T-bills that is a different thing but most of our user base in the emerging markets is unbanked so they cannot so for them having a safe dollar is

the most important thing in the world so giving 4% more they don't that is not very interesting to them so I don't think our business model will be impacted I think that many probably others will see their business involved impacted if they you know if the regulators will look really look at what they're doing And, you know, the, I think the, we welcome competition. We think that although outside the US, competition will be very hard almost for everyone, for anyone, because if you don't go in the streets as we do, there is no way to grow. And that's what we did and it's very hard to do.

So we welcome people, more people coming, more competitors coming to Africa. But yeah, we'll be very excited. I think. Well, Palo, I think we're going to leave it there. Any last word from you? Any myths you want to bust or, you know, tether is obviously a very unfairly maligned company. Any last word from you? I met you the first time we were in Oslo, I think, for the Oslo Freedom Forum in person and saying. And look, many things changed. I remember very well the conversation at dinner. I think was very helpful. I mean, I started doing that like before our, you know, that event. But I think the Oslo of Freedom Forum was the second.

public event that was doing, right? So I had to learn a lot myself. We went through hell and back as a company. So I think I'm seeing what makes also, I'm being very public, but was never in the US. I see the difference that makes me be in the US. So I will be in the US much, much more frequently. Well, we're glad to have you. Palo, this has been great. Best of luck with everything. Thank you. Thank you very much, Niketapar for having me again. You know.