The Pomp Podcast - #1564 Paolo Ardoino | Tether Is A $2 TRILLION Company?!

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

Paolo Ardoino is the CEO of Tether and the CTO of Bitfinex. In this conversation we talk about stablecoins, regulation in the United States, plans for the $13 billion of profit, investments in AI, and what their plans are for the future. =======================Maple Finance is where real money meets real yield. With over $1.5B managed, Maple offers secure lending, Bitcoin yield, and premium DeFi assets like syrupUSDC. Get started today at https://www.maple.finance !=======================Xapo Bank, the world’s first fully licensed Bitcoin-enabled bank, offers military-grade security with an unmatched blend of physical and digital security, as well as pioneering regulatory oversight, so your funds are always protected. Beyond secure storage, they enable you to grow and use your Bitcoin. Earn daily interest in Bitcoin, spend with zero FX fees using a global card, and make instant payments via the Lightning Network for unrivalled access and convenience. Visit https://www.xapobank.com/pomp to join.=======================Polkadot is a scalable, secure, and decentralized blockchain technology aimed at creating Web3. Created by Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ethereum, Polkadot empowers users to build decentralized applications with ease. Backed by industry leaders, making it a preferred choice for big names, Polkadot stands out as a leading choice for investors seeking a reliable, future-proof solution in the growing world of Web3 technology. Learn more at https://polkadot.com/.=======================Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/=======================View 10k+ open startup jobs:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales. Using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. what's up everyone this is anthony pompliano many of you know me as pomp you're listening to the pomp podcast which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them

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on, guys. Today, we have a very, very special conversation with Paolo Arduino. He is the CEO of Tether and the CTO of Bitfinex. They're the most profitable company per employee in the entire world. They did $13.7 billion in profit last year, and now he's here to tell us what's going on with the stablecoin, what exactly is happening with regulation in the United States, what are they going to do with $13 billion of profit? They're investing in AI and brain-computer interfaces, and they want to see a very specific version of the future come to life. They're going to fund it and build it themselves.

Paolo's always a great conversation because he is rational and he really understands how so much of the market is developing, both in the emerging market, but also in developed markets like the United States. And this conversation gives you tons of insight into how he's thinking about it. And then also he gives us an idea

of what he thinks Tether's actually worth in terms of its market value. It's a big, big number that surprised me, but I think that they're probably actually undervaluing what they've built so far. So here's my latest conversation with Paolo Arduino. Paolo, I thought a great place to start the conversation is the U.S. Senate just passed the Genius Act. They're sending it along. This is supposed to create a federal framework for stable coins. You run the biggest stable coin. You're the king of the mountain right now.

How do you guys look at the United States kind of leaning in on this? And what do you think the ramifications of this bill will be once it is fully passed in the United States? Well, first of all, thanks, Moppo, for having me. Look, I think everyone knows that the US, being the most powerful country in the world and the country that is the biggest economic power in the world, every other country is looking at the US in this moment. So the US passing a law for stablecoins at the federal level is truly important because that will become the template for everyone else so we're going to see right now there are just few jurisdictions that are dipping their toes in in stable coins and crypto in general but with this first the stable coin bill and then the

market structure that is the comprehensive crypto bill that the the congress wants to pass then it will become the blueprint for for for the world so that is first of all very exciting second i mean being tethered the company that created the first stable coin 2014 um 11 years in in the making and And now, after 11 years, we're seeing the greatest country in the world passing a bill on our innovation. So we are very humbled and we are very excited. So I think it's the right way forward. And look, very honestly, I saw some speculations going around, oh, it's going to be OK for

Tether. You know, look, I like this stable coin bill because it forces a lot of requirements to onshore and foreign stable coins. And I think it's very egalitarian, is creating an even playing field. It pushes and raise the bar very high. Also for a foreign stable coin like USDT. It has strong requirements for AML, strong requirements for compliance, stronger requirements for reciprocity and comparable regimes where foreign stable coins have to be regulated and incorporated. And so that, in my opinion, is the right way to go. And so we are very proud. As I said multiple times, Tether is interested to meet the requirements and will meet the requirements for an issuer, as well as is looking to create a grassroots domestic stablecoin. We think that we are able to create two different products that will serve two very different use cases, a super highly efficient stablecoin for a very, very high efficiency market like the U.S. market, that it has the best efficiency in all the financial rails in the world, and a stablecoin that is USDT.

that is the stable coin for the emerging markets developing countries is the stable coin for the people not for the institution not for the you know the bankers is the stable coin for the people so that's what is our aim and that's what we like to see from this bill it feels like there was a moment in time where there's some u.s players were kind of targeting you guys and some of these things that were in there uh you guys could have you know tucked your tail between your legs and run off and say we're not going to the u.s uh you've been coming to the u.s a lot you've been visiting the United States, you've been going to Washington, you've been going to Wall Street, you've been going to various cities, I think meeting with a lot of people. And it sounds like

really the way that you guys are going to respond to legislation is you'll continue to do USDT for the people, as you mentioned. But then you also want to create something that is here for kind of the US financial system. And I can't help but notice that like JP Morgan just announced the JPMD, which is kind of their version of a bank oriented or bank integrated alternative to stable coins and so is this just a game where ultimately tether with you know whatever 13 billion dollars in profit per year is going to go up against the big banks and we're going to see who actually can get their dollar denominated you know kind of digital asset adopted by the most amount of people in the u.s well i think that the banks and this bank consortium or jp morgan is no threat to

our broader business model. The foreign stablecoin USDT will remain, in my opinion, undisputed winner in emerging markets. I don't see JP Morgan or any other bank from the ivory towers going and building adoption with the boots on the ground in Argentina and Turkey, in Vietnam, in Nigeria, in Kenya. We are there every single day with our team. We're breaking our backs to build kiosks in Africa. And we are doing education in bodegas in Central South America in the number of hundreds of thousands. So that is completely far from the mentality of the big banks in the United States and in Europe or what matters. But also, I like this analogy that I tried to use to explain the different use cases, right? So what you have in

U.S., you have to imagine the U.S. as a market that has 90% perfection and efficiency of financial rails. So what the U.S. achieved over the last 120 years is basically perfection of financial rails, almost like 90% perfection. And if you are the stable coin of it, you get to 95%. So you gain 5% more because stable coins are more programmable money. You can do a few more things with stable coins that are nice to have in the united states and it's not really you couldn't couldn't do it before was just more com much more complex or less elegant to do these things um with uh with without stable coins or without blockchain technology if you take a country like nigeria or or others the efficiency of the financial rails is 20 if you add a stable coin it becomes 50 so instead

of gaining 5%, like the United States, you would gain 30%. So these are completely two super different markets. So yeah, our competitors thought, well, you know, Tether is going to stay in their old small niche that by the way, our niche counts up to 3 billion users, 3 billion people that are the ones left behind by the financial system. So even calling them a niche would be extremely detrimental to half of the population of the world. But nevertheless, again, I think that what the difference between Tether, even for the U.S. market, the difference between Tether and the big banks is that we understand what people want. Even in the U.S., you have people that have basic income and part of the working class that are not the reaches that can afford or cannot be served or boarded necessarily by JP Morgan. And so that is our market, right?

We understand the normal people very well, better than anyone else. When you think about kind of those individuals, there really seems to be two use cases for the U.S. dollar, right? People want to pay for things. People want to hold them. We know that just changing the technology form factor, kind of the wrapper around the dollar, doesn't change the debasement rate, doesn't change the inflation rate, kind of any of those things. And so what are you guys seeing when it comes to these individuals' portfolios or kind of the different currencies they use? Are they using dollars to spend and then they're holding like Bitcoin for savings or are they trying to get gold? Or, you know, I know you guys have Tether Gold, like talk a little bit as to what the dollar is being used for.

And then what are they supplementing the rest of their financial life with as a way to protect themselves from that debasement or inflation? Look, when it comes to USDT, 37 percent of the users of USDT are using USDT as a savings account, because if you live in Turkey, if you live in Nigeria, if you live in Argentina, Your national currency is devaluating at the pace that is incredible, is insane against the U.S. dollar. So it's normal for the people, well, the wide user base of USDT to use it as their savings account. Of course, the richer the country or the wealthier is the person, then it might use USDT as a checking account. Now, we believe that there is a space for, and by the way, Tether does a lot of Bitcoin education, for example. When we go in all the emerging markets, first we explain Bitcoin, and then we talk about stable coins. Unfortunately, in the emerging markets especially, you have still people that have urgencies.

They have priorities in their lives, right? So they're not rich people. And again, they live in a country where the inflation is 70% year over year. so they have bigger problems than trying to understand what would what is bitcoin that of course to all of us bitcoin is the best currency in the world it is the biggest creation in financial industry but requires a level understanding that not necessarily is everyone is ready to undergo and and they might not have the time but they know the dollar right so they have been knowing the dollar for the last decades and using the dollar in the form of cash bills for

the last decades. And so that's what they ask first. They ask, okay, can you give me stablecoin? Can you give me USDT? Teach me how to use USDT. And then that is the pathway to get them on Bitcoin. And when it comes to gold, also the common denominator of emerging markets is the appreciation of gold, right? Gold has been the currency of the world for the last 5,000 years. And India and a lot of countries Africa and other many countries in Asia and Middle East have been using gold as a form of

savings as well. So we are seeing recently an uptake also given the fact that the gold price went almost 2x or actually more than 2x in the last two year and a half or three years, then we're seeing an uptake of interest of Tether Gold. In this moment, Tether Gold is is the interest is more from hedge funds and professional traders that are looking at using it as their reserve or collateral, because honestly, it would be a better collateral than any fiat currency, including also the dollar, right? So they're looking at at least diversifying their portfolio when it comes to their savings portfolio or their collateral portfolio with Tether Gold. But also we are seeing higher uptake from the retail that are, you know, the retail has been buying paper gold a lot recently. And the beauty of Tether Gold is that we have physical gold in a vault owned by Tether and controlled by Tether.

Now we hold between Tether Gold and Tether owned gold reserves. We have more than, well, around 80 tons of gold, of physical gold held in Switzerland. So, you know, it's not your vault, not your gold, like not your keys, not your coins. It's pretty much our philosophy. I have heard that you guys have the physical gold and there have been times where they have been counted. And to make sure that you got exactly what you need. Right. And and verified and things like that, which talk a little bit about the attestations that you guys put. Recently, I was talking to someone and they were asking me all about, you know, where's the money go?

And and I said, well, look, here's a Web site. And the breakdown, I think, has gotten much better over time. It's got a lot more granularity to it, but just maybe talk about the idea of putting it out there and then also like how you think about allocating what those reserves actually are. So the reserves are predominantly in U.S. treasuries, and then we have a bit of gold and a bit of Bitcoin, but we have strong over collateralization. So Tether USDT market cap is around one hundred fifty five billion dollars. we have around 125 billion dollars in u.s treasuries plus we have golden bitcoin and we have an overcollateralization just for the stable coin of around six to seven billion dollars so now we are you know running up to the end of the quarter so we are going to do the updated calculations

but we are keeping several billion dollars more than the 100 percent reserves that we need to keep in order to fulfill all their redemptions. That's because we don't want to be like a bank. Banks do up to 90% of fractional reserve. They only keep 10% in liquid assets. We want to keep more than 100% in liquid assets, among which the vast, vast, vast majority is U.S. Treasuries short term. And plus, the entire Tether Group has, give or take, another $15 to $16 billion in excess so that, you know, overall, the entire group has an equity of $176 billion in front of $155 billion as a market cap of USDT.

So that is very unprecedented in the financial industry. That's what makes us, I think, very different. Now, we are very proud to release a portal attestation that is done by BDO, that is the fifth largest auditor in the world. The attestation is the industry standard, is very thorough and independently verified. So BDO does a very good job in independently verifying our reserves. Your right to the gold as well is being checked, weighted, and they pass through the scanner. So they make sure it's not tungsten. And yeah, so I think that transparency is key.

And what I like about the Genius Act is that the requirements of transparency, either you are domestic or foreign, are very strong so that, you know, you cannot have another Terra Luna that hides behind a finger and call itself a stable coin. What do you think about the Circle IPO? You know, we've seen Circle obviously come out of the gate and explode. I saw somebody trying to break down the financials of Tether and say, well, if Tether was a public company, given these financials and kind of the way the market is treated, you guys basically be worth a gazillion dollars. This would be crazy how valuable Tether would be. How do you look at that? And would you ever be tempted to take Tether public or just talk a little bit as to kind of you're getting updated information from the market on how they're treating the second largest stable coin? I got to imagine that you guys are thinking, you know, internally, does that change anything that you guys are doing, either in the financing of your company, going public, or maybe even how you operate?

Well, first of all, we're very excited to see that multiplier. So I think that someone put out an analysis saying that, you know, with a conservative multiplier, Tether would be worth $500 billion. And I said that is very conservative with all due respect, because, you know, we did the same multiplier that that Circle has, plus the fact that we have golden Bitcoin has reserves, plus the fact that we have and we own our distribution network. We don't have to pay the distribution network like the vast majority of our profits. Then Tether with the same multiplier would be worth two trillion dollars. So, you know, that is a nice number. Now, we are not interested to go public, especially given the fact that the company is very profitable. And this year, we think we could beat last year profits.

Then, you know, why going public? Because, look, there are two reasons why people, well, why companies want to go public. The first one is access to cheap capital. and in 13.7 billion dollars last year and you know i would imagine similar numbers or higher numbers this year you know i it's very hard to to spend all that money you know we have great projects and very high ambitions but you know again we are very conservative in the way we manage the company we don't have uh you know dozens of of employees we have very highly professional selected number of employees that are rated they work very hard and are the best

class and also we have um we have lean operations we have we are reinvesting most of what we we earn in in safe assets like gold and bitcoin but also we are doing we have a very strong investment arm that is investing in in new technologies like biotech artificial intelligence and telecommunications even land and agriculture because we think that is out the ultimate stability of the world because society will always need land agriculture so we have all that so we don't need access to capital and also most importantly i don't need we don't need an exit right we are going we we i feel like tether is one year old it's not 11 years old is we i feel like we just started we we can create the greatest company in the world we are super excited every

single day we wake up even more excited than the day before and um that's something that um is a strong testament to everyone in the company. So yeah, no, we are not going to be public. Actually, funny fact, I took a photo. I did a great interview, I think it was great, with the New York Stock Exchange, I think a few months ago. And then I walked out from that hall and I looked at the bull, I took a selfie, and basically I posted a picture saying, tether does not need to go public because again we don't need the money and we don't plan to do an exit and my interview was removed from from the new york stock exchange website that was hilarious um so but look we are we are simple people even if you know we not necessarily the establishment

likes us in as establishment talking the big strong all the finance uh the finance world i we don't care right so we we don't want to live quarter by quarter trying to please a couple of analysts from JP Morgan. Why? I mean, we have a beautiful business and we are helping hundreds of millions of people. Speaking of maybe the incumbent financial system, one organization that loves you guys is Cantor Fitzgerald. You obviously have a great relationship. It started with Howard Letnick and the Cantor team. Now, Brandon Letnick and his brother, I think you guys are very close with. And it seems like Tether and Cantor have this kind of symbiotic thing where they were very helpful to you all in terms of helping to attest to the

reserves and things like that early on. But also, I think as you guys have started to do more things in the United States, they seem to be helpful there. Talk a little bit about that relationship and maybe Howard, Brandon, and the rest of the team. Well, Cantor is, I would say, the first institution that took Bitcoin very seriously. We had the opportunity to meet them very early on a few years ago when they were looking at all the different players in the industry. And they found ourselves very interesting. But first, they wanted to understand and get the answer to the biggest

question around Tether that circulated. Do we have actually the money? So they did two years of very strong due diligence. They turned every single rock. And the more time was passing there was like they were like all right these guys must have the money because they everything that they say is there and uh you know that that uh in the end uh um ended up with um howard latnik going public in um early 2024 with the statement they have the money uh proving and saying that you know money the the all the t-bills are in counterfeit gerald and um you know like The vast, vast majority of the tables are in the country of Gerald and they are on U.S. soil.

That is the other thing, right? So there is still a lot of fad, a lot of misinformation like around Tether. We keep our reserves with our treasuries in the United States. if we were a company that wanted to hide would we keep 120 plus billion dollars in the most or one of the most regulated financial institutions in the united states that is like you know the when you hear this stuff i i think people don't open x or don't open you know our website or don't don't read since 2017 because you know they're clearly stuck to the old fashion of fad because now um I think that everyone that has a bit of brain and can read and is looking around can see that, first of all, given the profitability tether, given the fact that we keep our money in the United States, we have been scrutinized by so many regulators, the New York Attorney General and so many others.

We have been onboarded and scrutinized by even Cantor. And so that was, I think, a strong result. Plus, I think that the counter now is positioning itself as the leader in space when it comes to Bitcoin products. They announced like Bitcoin lending. They announced a product that is, you know, a fund that is a fund that allows people, companies go long Bitcoin, but with downside protection with gold. So there are I think that they are very good in understanding the space and very, very committed. And I'm proud to be to have participated to their orange feeling. I love that they they did two years of due diligence.

And I remember when Howard Lutton came out and said they got the money and everyone was like, wait, what? Like, that's not a Bitcoin or saying that. Right. That's somebody who if he's saying that he really, really believes or he's going to look very bad after the fact. And so I think that was a kind of a seminal moment. But but also, I think that you've worked with a lot of other organizations. Most recently, the Department of Justice basically came out and said that you guys helped them. If I understand this correctly, it's like a $225 million case, but it's around pig butchering. Is that right?

Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy, right? So, you know, it's a romance scam. It's like nice. Well, nice girls could be now generated with AI. I don't know. I mean, but, you know, maybe there is like there is an old dude behind them.

But, you know, sending messages to guys and basically asking them for money and guys basically sending these girls some money. And crazy thing is that they were able to get $225 million out of this. And there is a huge misconception around it. So, you know, I was talking to some journalists and they were like, oh, that means that, you know, these criminals are using USDT and, you know, a lot. And I was like, no, that is actually the wrong way to look at it. The right way to look at it is that tick-back churn is not stealing USDT from the people. What happens is that the criminals are asking for the money. The money is being sent through credit cards and debit cards or other payment apps to payment processors that these payment processors are from bank accounts.

what it matters. The money is first sent to payment processor, then is moved on an exchange, and then is moved maybe on a crypto exchange, and then is moved to USDT. When it gets to USDT, we freeze it. So for two or three times, traditional financial systems fail to freeze and to recognize the scam and to freeze the money. They fail that. And when it comes to USDT, When it gets converted to USDT and goes on chain, we can recognize the patterns because for the last 11 years, we developed the best monitoring technology and then we proceed to freezing. So all the noise about, you know, cryptocurrencies and stable coins used for criminal activity is actually stable coins and USDT is the worst, are the worst tool for criminals because criminals will be caught and money will be frozen. When you think about users of USDT, one of the things to me that becomes really interesting is by having a public blockchain, you now have access to that information. You're talking about a law enforcement use case here.

Are there things that you think you can do, whether it's generating analytics, whether it's measuring inflation, whether it's measuring an economy or other things that you can start to do as you get access to more and more information on chain? like i've always been fascinated with this idea that um you know we know that the fed and the bureau of labor statistics like they're horrible with the data they're looking at backwards looking information they're trying to tell you what's going to happen in the future by telling you what happened in like february with inflation but right now stripe or uh square or maybe like a zillow or uh you know any of these sites they have real-time information you all maybe more so than almost anyone in the world have real-time information of payments and and kind of what people are doing with money have you guys started to kind of explore what exactly is is valuable

there well yes so we we are created an internal dashboard to understand exactly how usdt is being used and that dashboard is the one that allows us to understand that 37 percent of usdt holders are holding usdt as a savings account we as we understand the time zones where usdt is being sent the most we understand the service providers that are using most usdt so that's how we could get to understanding that now we have around 450 million users and the growth of number of wallets per quarter is around 30 million new wallets and so that is almost like facebook facebook level of growth so look i think that data is is fundamental for for a business like Tether, because with data we can automate a lot. We are starting to

implement through our QVAC AI platform. We are also thinking how we can leverage all the data that we are collecting from blockchains to try to understand our business better. In a certain way, the fact that Tether became so popular without us having even a marketing team, you have sometimes to go back and look in retrospect and understand why it happened and what made it made it great and so that's what we are doing through this platform we are going back in the entire history of tether and trying to to pair it every single um increase or decrease of

the monetary supply um tied to event geopolitical local event and so on and trying to link it to time zones link it to different service providers and so that is extremely helpful so i think that is going to be the foundation for our future growth. We are now starting to use these tools to understand how commodity traders are using USDT. That, I believe, is going to be the biggest game changer for the growth of Tether in the next few years. Explain that more. Why the commodity traders? So if you're a commodity trader, you do oil deals. Imagine you want to buy some oil and trade oil what happens is that you you have a ship waiting to load barrels of oil in some dock and then the ship cannot start loading the barrels of oil until the the wire hits uh the bank account

of the seller and that can take one day three days seven days you know they're they're the slowness is incredible even for huge commodity trading firms we're talking to the biggest all the biggest commodity trading firms and they all report the same and so you know they they suddenly discover usdt and they think that is the best thing after sliced bread because then for them they all know that in all the emerging markets and all basically most of the countries where they're used to to to do trades and send dollars they can send usdt because usdt there is accepted by the population because those are exactly the countries that are using usdt as their savings accounts so then they know that the seller is incentivized to um to to obtain usdt as a payment

because it's faster and so they can the efficiency of money for the commodity traders is higher the salary is happier because gets the money sooner and also the salaries it knows that can also use usdt locally and to pay salaries to the population and all that because it is accepted as a normal currency look at bolivia i mean bolivia i posted a tweet like in the in in bolivian shops in santa cruz people and the the you know tags of the price tags are usd that happens all the time in many many countries in many many cities when you think about how this stuff starts to play out um do you foresee a world where tether is integrated into the stock market like for example rather than than using the electronic dollars. I want to sell a stock and I literally sit in Tether or I pull

withdraw money from the stock market in Tether. How deep into the traditional financial system can you push this versus do you have to build a parallel system and you say, hey, look, we got to go build a whole new stock exchange. We got to go build a whole new kind of payment system and then we'll put Tether into that world. So I think that consortium banks will try to cover the first a use case that you described um and honestly that will be basically a tokenized money market fund because you know traders especially from the traditional world they are used to such a high efficiency of money um having clearing houses and all that that it's are you know always at their disposal that they you know it will just improve the the efficiency a little bit as i

said from 90 to 95 percent so what i believe that is gonna but you know focusing on that use case will not improve 90 of the rest of the population so you know three four billion people are living in different conditions they are the ones that cannot access to the to the to the traditional markets they they need different tools they need tools then they they they they leap forward 30 years of technology and will use DAXs on chain, they will use stable coins and all that. So actually it's the emerging markets that will need a parallel financial system, still subject to regulations.

Again, the genius art is a great first example, but this will bring new opportunities to the people that need it the most. I don't think the traders that are used to one nanosecond efficiency for trading will benefit incredibly much from a stable coin. But if you live in Nigeria and want to have access to a stock market, for example, that is a game changer. Today's episode is brought to you by Maple, the go-to place for on-chain asset management. There aren't many teams in crypto who manage real money the right way. But Maple does. Maple now manages over a billion dollars,

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along with a new auction model and significant implementations like ASIC banking. Given these characteristics, it's easy to understand why Polkadot is gaining more and more traction in the cryptocurrency world. Some people even are talking about it as the AWS of Web3. Now, companies such as Mythical Games, Astro Network, and over 50 other independent blockchains with hundreds of applications already leverage Polkadot's technology to power their platforms. If you're looking for a reliable, scalable, and cutting-edge solution, Polkadot seems to be the top choice for industry players. Go check them out today at Polkadot.com. and when you start to see kind of uh the profits that you guys are generating obviously it's a lot 13.7 billion last year uh just a couple of pennies um you are investing in all kinds of

things as a diversification strategy um but they're not just things where you're going and saying hey let's go buy you know a car wash you guys are investing in ai you're investing in brain computer interfaces you're investing in humanoid stuff you're doing you know computational power I mean, like the things you're doing are the future, regardless of who the individual winners are, like the trends are, where the world is headed. Talk about the philosophy there and maybe some of the projects that you guys are heavily involved with. Maybe we can talk about QVAC. And then I know that the brain-computer interface is maybe one of the things that you spend the most time thinking about. So we are being in this lucky situation.

We are carefully planning how we use our profits. And being big coiners at heart, we created this basically almost an equation that says that in order to have a stable society, the journalist asked me, how you would define Tether? And the journalist told me that he would define Tether as the stable coin company. And I replied, I would define it as the stable company. So, remove coin is the stable company because the aim is helping stability of society. And so, we realize that for society to be stable, society needs stable money. That, you know, for emerging markets, stable money can be USDT because their existing solution is not that stable, at least compared to USDT. So, everything is relative, of course.

You could say that stable money for the U.S. could be gold or Bitcoin, but for Nigeria or for Turkey, stable money is USDT. Then the second thing would be, so this equation is fourfold. The second part would be freedom of speech and the freedom of communications. And so we are trying to do that with Keet and Holepunch, creating peer-to-peer communications with a great user experience that is basically equal to or superior to a normal centralized system. but completely undisruptable completely unstoppable completely free for everyone right so that is the second layer the third one is stable energy so um you need for a stable society you need to have uh an egalitarian access to electricity so um electricity brings to education brings to a lot of things of course it's very obvious so we are even in africa we are trying to

help with stable electricity or energy through these kiosks that we're building with solar panels on top and batteries inside we are selling subscription to rechargeable batteries we did a pilot with 500 kiosks now in small um small villages in africa and we have now you know 500 kiosks around 500 000 um subscribers already and we did more than 10 million battery swaps. So that is the pilot. But by 2026, we're going to have 10,000 kiosks. And by 2030, we're going to have 100,000 kiosks. So that is stable energy. It's like decentralized energy. So you don't have, you know, you have, you bring the energy source

closer to the user. That's what we like about Bitcoin, right? And what we like about peer-to-peer telecommunications, like bringing the ownership and the control basically closer to the person, closer to the user. The last one is stable intelligence. And so stable intelligence means an intelligence that is controlled and owned by the person and not by a big corporation. So my theory is I made this analogy with the Casio calculator.

When I was a kid, when I was in elementary school, we were forced to do all the multiplication, division, additions uh with mind with our mind so to train our mind and become fast and being able to be to quickly multiply and divide and all that now most of the people um they are so used to use calculators that they cannot even for a small uh addition they will not do it by mind they will do it on the calculator and so imagine for a simple case like calculations how calculators what calculators made to the ability of people to calculate in their mind, imagine what AI could do to the human brain if basically AI

will do all the thinking or most of the thinking. And so at least the concept of not your coins, not your keys, not your coins, and not your vault, not your gold should be applied to the intelligence. So not your AI, not your intelligence is kind of our motto. So we want to build a peer-to-peer AI platform that allows to do inference and keep the data of the users that are local to the people's devices. So it can run on a $30 smartphone, can run

basically everywhere. It adapts, of course. The more power, the better it will be. The model that it's going to be using, the more weights it's going to be used from the model and all that. But that is, in my opinion, a way to ensure that AI will not increase the gap of access to education and access to intelligence between different populations. Already money is a huge divider. And I think that AI could multiply that divider by 100x

if we don't create something that, again, is peer-to-peer from the get-go. We cannot live in a future where only three companies will have the entire intelligence of the world. And so that's something that Tether, fortunately, has the balance sheet to fight against and to build a different alternative system. We need it already once with money

and we're going to do it again with intelligence. When you think about the future of Tether, 20 years from now, 30 years from now, you're a young guy, good looking Italian, only second best looking one on this call here, but a good looking Italian. What is the vision for this, right? I mean, you have solved one of the problems

that is very difficult for people who have high ambition and who have unique thoughts of the world, which is you have the capital. That profit is an engine that you can use to go after some of these big ideas. Is it something where Elon's got everything from rockets to electric vehicles to brain-computer interface?

He's trying to build the future and you guys aspire to be much more than just the stable coin? Or is there some other future vision that you really see for the Tether Group that people should keep in mind as we watch this play out over the next couple of decades? Well, I think that it might be counterintuitive, but my dream is to create a company

that builds technology that can survive to the death of the company itself. We exceeded our dreams with the profitability of this company and personally and all that. Tether only distributed less than 5% of the profits that it made from inception. So all the rest is kept in the company to invest in great opportunities, great companies, great minds to build. But with one mission, to build a decentralized future that is bringing control and power closer to the person. I want to build technology that not even Tether can control. If we build a communication app, I want people to control the communication app, to have the data local. to have i want that communication up to survive even even i die or tether dies right that is the

beauty i think that is the ultimate goal of what we are building is to to create that same with the eye the same with everything else right so we want to do things that um are resistant to the wrath of god hence they they should survive to whatever happens including tether disappearing so only at that point i know that we have done a very good job what is your personal mission still what what is the thing that you haven't accomplished yet outside of the company like we know the company as you just described but for you personally like what what is motivating what is the thing that you're still driving towards i mean my my my dream is really linked to to to the company since that i i think that we

I think that myself, I can build with our team this vision of ensuring that in the worst case scenario, the thing that I hate the most is technology is only working. We are so immersed in technology today, and that technology only works in the best case scenario. I mean, in these last days, you might have heard of this little thing as the World War III that was airing around. And I can guarantee you that in that case, if that truly happens, most of the technology that we have in our pockets will stop working because internet lines will be cut. And so technology should be more local, should be able to work in the worst case scenario, should be able to work with latency that is one day or one week. most of the applications don't work if latency is higher than one second. And there are timeouts for technology that is every single SDK or library for coding has a timeout of 30 seconds.

So if you cannot get a connection for 30 seconds, everything starts to fail. How crazy is that? But if we are living in a disaster scenario, we need to be able to have technology that works locally first. that's my mission is actually to prove that you can build great technology that is human first is person first is peer first and can survive to the worst case scenarios but even if we are going to a multi-planetary life what is the latency between here and the moon what is the latency between here and mars so we need to be able to have that type of technology and that's what we

building with the whole punch with our ai platform with everything else it is a future where doesn't matter if you are close or far everything will keep working the and you are going to be protected by by your technology and everything will be open even with the brain computer interface company we want to build an open source brain operating system so that people will have full control over their own lives that is my life mission um you know it's all started for me when i've been a coder all my life i started when i was eight and i know i've been a sci-fi fan that is driving all most of my thoughts i always think about like sci-fi event sci-fi eventually will come true and so so it means that she eventually will hit the fan and

i want to be able to build for that scenario and i did i was researching this group that was um building a telecommunication network for for disaster scenarios like from the apocalyptic scenario or a battlefield and if you are like a person in a battlefield you know you have you need this communication network that will work and will it needs to save your life right you need to talk to your friends needs to be able to get you out from a very dangerous situation and so i started thinking about technology in that sense so you need technology that will save your life when your life when you are the most scared when your life is in danger because that could happen to everyone and and so that is basically how i try to think about everything that i build

in in in um in tether i could talk to you all day man i uh i'm obviously very impressed with uh what you guys are doing with tether but i think that the broader vision kind of the vision for humanity and this intersection with technology is inspiring um and uh you know i'm glad that you guys have the capital uh available to you to go and see if uh if you can help usher that world in there's not very many people who i think understand some of these problems but also have the the courage and ambition to go after them so uh from everyone else thank you very much and we'll definitely we do this again in the future. Thank you for having me. Great talking to you.