The Pomp Podcast - Stablecoins Will Send Bitcoin MUCH HIGHER | Bo Hines

Episode Date: February 24, 2026

Bo Hines is the CEO of Tether US and a former White House crypto advisor who helped shape U.S. digital-asset policy during a critical moment for the industry. This conversation was recorded live at Bitcoin Investor Week in New York. In this conversation, we discuss Bo’s work in the White House on crypto policy, including the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, the GENIUS Act, and the push for regulatory clarity. We also cover stablecoin adoption, why UX matters more than yield, how Tether is connecting global markets to U.S. capital, and why stablecoins could be the on-ramp to the next phase of bitcoin and financial infrastructure.=======================Simple Mining makes Bitcoin mining simple and accessible for everyone. We offer a premium white glove hosting service, helping you maximize the profitability of Bitcoin mining. For more information on Simple Mining or to get started mining Bitcoin, visit https://www.simplemining.io/=======================Arch Public is an agentic trading platform that automates the buying and selling of your preferred crypto strategies. Sign up today at https://www.archpublic.com and start your automated trading strategy for free. No catch. No hidden fees. Just smarter trading.=======================0:00 - Intro0:19 - White House crypto policy & Bo Hines’ role2:52 - How important is the Clarity Act?4:10 - Tether: scale, growth & global impact10:49 - Stablecoin yield debate12:37 - Financial access, wallets & the unbanked14:19 - Tether’s relationship with Bitcoin15:46 - Reserves, transparency & risk17:24 - Interoperability & the future of stablecoins

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save and invest conditions apply visit scotiabank.com hisa to learn more scotia bank you're richer than you think and so we're hoping with this u.s product you know with our 530 million customers worldwide, we can connect these emerging markets to the U.S. capital markets and create these corridors that have never been established before in finance. And I think that Tether is probably the only company position to do that in the world. Why is Tether good for Bitcoin or what are the activities that Tether engages in that supports Bitcoin? You're at the White House. You now are the CEO of USAT. And when I think about your importance in the crypto industry, there are a couple of big things that you can hang your hat on. One of those being that you

got the strategic bitcoin reserve done you were able to get a lot of clarity uh no pun intended in terms of uh the the administration's uh approach to crypto talk maybe just about your time in the white house uh working on the crypto stuff and when you walked out that door to go and work with tether how did you look at like here's what we accomplished yeah no i mean first and foremost we had a blast um obviously with david being in there you know we we set the mission forward to move at tech speed and i feel like we did that in that office um you know patrick was the deputy there who's now in my former role um but it was just fun i mean we moved at lightning speed to try to get as many things accomplished that we possibly could you know obviously

understanding the nature of political cycles and how these things work we felt like we had momentum early and we captured it um but you know i think that the biggest question that we had to answer when we were when we first arrived was what bill do we want to put forward first and um that that was, you know, kind of the debate between genius and clarity. Obviously, you know, we were able to get genius passed this past July. But the clarity debate continues to rage on. I do not envy Patrick in this position right now. But I think one of the things that might be lost in some people is, yes, we were able to get the SBR done through executive order. Obviously, we hope to see that, you know, cemented, you know, through congressional action. But we had the president's

working group report on digital assets. It was also released. And this was probably the most comprehensive regulatory framework ever produced by a government in terms of what the digital assets ecosystem should look like. And I encourage you to go take a read. It's crypto.gov. You can go look at it, kind of comb through it and see everything that's in there. But our goal was to kind of lay the groundwork for a brave new world in the financial system. And so with Genius, obviously, stablecoin regulation gives us the on and off ramp we need to enact a world in which I think a lot of us in the technology space have dreamed of in digital assets world where we have 24-7 markets and all of that grandiose stuff. So I loved my time there.

I felt like it was the right time to move on after Genius was passed. I think I got kind of leveraged into being the bully a little bit on that bill. So it's always good to have a fresh voice in the room for the next phase. But post that report, decided to step back and that's what's led me to be the CEO of Tether US now. Now, when you think about the Clarity Act, everyone is very focused on, hey, is this thing going to pass? Is it not? We had some people yesterday put the odds at 60% odds that it gets passed. How important is this for the industry or is everything going to be fine if it doesn't get passed, but it'd be nice to have? I mean, I think it's immensely important. You know, it's the other piece of the puzzle in order to have the complete picture that we need in order to progress things forward. You know, I think it's probably 80 to 90 percent likely that it passes.

I mean, we're down to, you know, a few small details that we need to iron out here. And really the biggest one being about UX structure. And, you know, I say that because everyone in the media is talking about this yield debate between banks and the crypto natives. You know, I really don't think it's a yield debate. It's more of a UX debate, meaning that do you have to be an OCC chartered bank and do you have to have a separate platform in order to pass that yield along to your customers? And this really only pertains to one actor in the space. And so I think that a lot of the folks in the crypto world are now unified around this. And I think that the banks are coming to terms with the fact that, you know, obviously stablecoin adoption is here and integration is about to begin.

And so I'm confident they'll get to the right place. And, you know, knowing how David and Patrick work, both brilliant, brilliant people, I think they'll find a good landing spot. Talk about Tether US and what you guys are doing. Yeah, well, look, I think Tether is arguably the most important player in the crypto ecosystem. That's not a commodity. And, you know, we have about 530 million customers now. We're growing at about a clip of 30 million a quarter, which is pretty remarkable. We're the 13th largest holder of gold in the world, and we're also huge Bitcoin maxis here at Tether. But it's just a very unique company, 300 employees, 10 billion in profit in 2025. Under the Genius Act in this brave new world, we decided that we wanted to launch a Genius

compliant stablecoin product here in the US to service institutions and work on that integration that we had attempted to set up in the White House with this bill. So, you know, it's been it's been a wild ride over the course of the last year. We move very fast. We're a lean, mean machine. But it's remarkable how organized everything is inside of the orbit. And that's truly a testament to how Palo runs the business from the international side. And so we're hoping with this U.S. product, you know, with our five hundred and thirty million customers worldwide, we can connect these emerging markets to the U.S., the U.S. capital markets and create these corridors have never been established before in finance.

And I think that Tether is probably the only company position to do that in the world. But, you know, Tether is much bigger than just a stable coin company. You know, we're prolific investors in technology space. We're building everywhere, whether it's in robotics, whether it's in infrastructure. You know, we're constantly looking for, you know, ways to improve the system. And I think that, you know, for folks that really care deeply about Bitcoin, stable coin integration is a huge boon for the ecosystem writ large. Because it's an on-ramp into this digital assets world that allows people to be able to move in and out of assets like Bitcoin. in these other commodities in a much quicker and more efficient way. And I think that's a great

thing. Saying that Tether is a prolific investor in technology is an understatement of like the century. Every time I talk to Paolo, I got to get an update about the Brain Computer Interface Company and the various other things. You mentioned these corridors. Describe a little bit as to, you know, what is the benefit of establishing this, right? Are there things that the U.S. institutions are trying to do that they can't do now because of the technology gap, or what is the kind of sales pitch, if you will, to these institutions? Yeah, I mean, look, it's still very inefficient to move money in the U.S. I mean, our rails are 95 percent efficient compared to the rest of the world, but it's not very cost effective.

You're limited to the time frames in which you can move money on a larger scale. And stable coin adoption really changes the world dramatically and all of these different verticals. And so you can think about it from like a settlement perspective, whether it's intra or inter bank settlements. Obviously, this allows, let's say, Korean banks to actually participate in U.S. capital markets on a Friday afternoon because they have a settlement mechanism and a vehicle to do so post-close. And so I think that the biggest thing right now as we think forward is what does the infrastructure look like? Obviously, like let's say you're trying to move, you know, NYSC on chain and have all of that trading take place there and have the on and off ramps be stables. The infrastructure has to be able to support it and has to be cost effective. And so I think there's a race right now to build chains in which, you know, it actually makes this reasonable and palatable for folks to move forward and create a world that behaves in this way.

But stablecoin adoption from the institutional side brings obvious savings to banks and other merchants alike. You go from T2 to T1 to T0 with stablecoins, you're not waiting for any intermediary settlements any longer. And so, you know, for businesses, this is also huge. For U.S. consumers, it's great just from a remittance perspective. But I think what you're going to see from UX adoption is a lot of these folks should be building these products all into one. And so you start thinking about origin points, whether it's payroll companies paying their employees in stable coins rather than on a bi-monthly basis. They can get paid on a daily basis now. They can programmatically say, hey, I want to send 10% of my daily paycheck to somewhere in Latam or somewhere in Asia.

And so packaging these financial products in a way that the consumer doesn't have to think about engaging with stables is the way that we want to move forward. And I think that what you'll find with U.S. citizens is they have access to many money transfer mechanisms, but they're still very costly. And so our goal is to change that dramatically over the course of the next couple of years. Today's episode is brought to you by Simple Mining. Bitcoin mining has a reputation for being complicated, risky, and hard to evaluate as a real investment. If you're considering mining in 2026, what actually matters isn't headline profitability. It's uptime, repairs, and whether the operation is run like a real business. That's why I've been using Simple Mining.

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ArchPublic. Go to archpublic.com and tell them I sent you. Let's talk about yield on the stable coins. Obviously, it's a huge debate. There is a trade-off between it could be beneficial to the users. It could put pressure on companies to do different things if that's not their monetization. You can imagine that some financial institutions are looking at yield and stable coins is almost like maybe not a loss leader, but just like, hey, we don't care about the margin as much.

We just are trying to use this from an adoption standpoint. How do you both from a national standpoint, you know, is the U.S. looking at the yield? And then how does Tether and USAT, how do you guys look at the yield? Well, I mean, Tether is agnostic when it comes to the old conversation because it's not our business model. What we do is we provide the deepest liquidity and the best distribution. And so that's how we attract our customers. I mean, our market cap right now is around $185 billion. You know, and obviously we've talked about the numbers of adoption in terms of how many people use the product.

So we have, you know, the on and off ramps back into fiat that people are looking for, especially on an institutional scale. And so I think that, again, you know, the larger question here is whether or not you can be a broker exchange in a bank all in one. You know, someone called this shadow banks. And I think this is where the banking industry starts to tighten up a little bit and starts to be protective of their territory. I think that the easy solution here is to get an OCC charter. And that way you can engage in the same model of yield sharing relationships that you could with your consumers, just like a bank would. And I think that's probably going to be the landing place with Clarity. I don't see how banks could be opposed to that.

You know, it's clean for the crypto natives. The OCC is moving very quickly in terms of handing out banking charters to crypto native companies. And so, you know, we're in a world in which we can do this. But for us, you know, we're kind of sitting on the sidelines just as patient, you know, observationists at the moment when it comes to this bill, because it really doesn't have a direct impact on us. When you think about the 530 million people who currently use Tether products, and you mentioned growing 30 million quarter over quarter, how do you think about what other financial services to provide to them? In a way, there are a lot of people who don't have traditional bank accounts, and now all of a sudden they have a wallet, they're able to transact, they can quote-unquote save in U.S. dollars, which is very attractive to people, especially internationally. Are there other things that you all can do over time to help them get more access to a financial system other than just dollars and payments? Yeah, I mean, I think that there's going to be – I'll start here. There's going to be immense, in my opinion, chain consolidation, stablecoin consolidation over the course of the next five to ten years.

The market here will behave just like any other market does, except it's going to be exponential in terms of how it shapes. And that's just the way in which the world of crypto moves. But I think that as you start seeing people build, especially in the wallet space, like Tether is working on WDK, which is our wallet development kit. This is an immense project for us. And we believe that having the point of origin for the customer is extremely important. And I think that's where the race will go. you'll start seeing people package a lot of these financial services into these wallets, which is tremendous for the consumer. And Tether's main mission over the course of the last

seven years has been to provide access to people that don't have the direct ability to engage with financial instruments that we need in our day-to-day lives to live. And that's something that we've accomplished in areas that a lot of people didn't think was possible 10 years ago. You know, it's just creating that financial access brings people together. And we're still very committed to doing that over the course of the next few years as we start working on these wallets and other financial instruments. You mentioned that you guys are Bitcoin maxis. Again, another understatement. Describe why is Tether good for Bitcoin or what are the activities that Tether engages in that supports Bitcoin?

Well, look, I mean, we love Bitcoin. Obviously, you know, Bitcoin acts as part of our reserves currently. We're big in Bitcoin mining. We're big in Bitcoin trading. Basically, every facet of the Bitcoin ecosystem we are engaged in. And I think that what you'll see with stablecoin adoption is, again, it provides these on- and off-ramp vehicles for people to actually engage with a commodity like Bitcoin. And so oftentimes, especially in a post-genius world, stablecoins will be the first introduction to the digital asset ecosystem that people have. And with that, they start getting comfortable with how things move across chain.

And obviously, Bitcoin being the granddaddy of them all, I think it'll be an invitation for people to actually use that as an investment vehicle of choice. And we're already starting to see wider spread adoption with larger institutions and multinationals. I think recently Bank of America announced they're allowing their wealth managers to start allocating funds of their clients into Bitcoin. The adoption is just beginning. And that's why I think that if you've been around this space for quite some time, which I'm sure many of you have, these cycles aren't as scary as people make them seem. Right. I mean, like it's it's volatile. Sure. But I, again, think that we're just in the infancy of what this looks like long term. And, you know, the integrations of our products and others will only provide a cleaner pathway into this Bitcoin community for folks that want to engage in it. Talk about the Tether transparency, the ad stations, the mix of, you know, you mentioned Bitcoin, gold, treasuries, like there's a pretty diversified basket on the back end.

And so how do you guys think about those components? Yeah, I mean, gold, Bitcoin and T-bills, right? You know, I think this year will be... Sound like you're like Charles Schwab or something. This year, I think we'll end up being a top 10 purchaser of T-bills. I think right now we're the 17th largest holder of T-bills in the world, including all sovereign states. And, you know, we're obviously increasing the amount of T-bills we have in the reserves as we move towards this genius compliance standard. And so obviously, I firmly believe that USDT will also have reciprocity.

And so we want to make sure that we fall into this genius-compliant regulatory system. But currently, we have USAT that fits that mold. And then we have three years to kind of get there on the USDT side. But in terms of the excess we have, we're still going to be certainly heavily invested in Bitcoin and looking to continue to grow our presence in that ecosystem long term. What are you worried about going forward? Are there any big risks or anything that you think need to be addressed? I think that privacy is something that we're going to have to think about very deeply over the course of the next few years.

It's something that the consumers demand. It's something that they deserve. And I think there's also a race to create products that also allow people to have the privacy while engaging with this technology on a larger and greater scale. So that's probably a conversation that could last 45 minutes to an hour if we really got into it. But I'll be curious to see how a lot of the folks working in this develop their technologies around it in the coming years. Now, when you think about USAT and then there's kind of I'll call it Tether International. How do you think about shared technology in the back end, working together, collaborating? Obviously, there's a lot of network effects that kind of come into here, but there's really two technically different products as well.

And so how do you guys think about that internally? Yeah, I mean, look, our goal is to create interoperability with these products. So, you know, the difference between Tether and USDT and USAT is that USDT, Tether International, is the issuer. USAT, Anchorage Digital Bank, is the issuer, which is a fully licensed OCC chartered bank here in the U.S. So separate reserves. And, you know, through that, we can facilitate interoperability between the two products in ways that the consumer doesn't have to think about which product they're actually using, right? It's just Tether at the end of the day. And that can be done through the issuer.

It can be done through pools on exchanges, can be done in the DeFi space with TBLs. I mean, there's all sorts of ways to do this. But really, it's up to the customer or the institution that we're servicing and how they want to set this up. But we're confident in our ability to make this as seamless as possible for the user so that these corridors are actually seamless and there's no speed bumps along the way. All right. And what's maybe your final word for everyone here in terms of USAT? Just be on the lookout. Look, we're in this brave new world. now of stablecoin adoption, I think that USAT will be the product of choice for many institutions.

And so if you see it pop up with a financial service provider that you use, feel free to give it a try and hopefully you can help others learn exactly what this is all about, help them save money. Amazing. All right. Thank you so much, Bob. I appreciate it.