Author: MD
Produced by: Bright Company
Original Title: Tether CEO Interview: Investing in Agriculture, Dairy, AI, and Brain-Computer Interfaces
During the global Bitcoin conference in late May, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino was interviewed by CNBC.
In the Bitcoin conference speech, Paolo Ardoino said that USDT has approximately 420 million users in emerging and developing markets, accounting for 62% of decentralized trading volume. "More significantly, about 35% of USDT users use it as a savings account—because they live in countries like Turkey, Argentina, and Vietnam with severe currency depreciation, and they can only choose to save in US dollars, with USDT being their most realistic option."
According to Coingecko data on June 18, USDT's total market value is approximately $155 billion, with a trading volume of about $27.7 billion in the past 24 hours, making it the world's largest stablecoin issuer. Circle (CRCL.US), the recently listed "first stablecoin stock", has issued USDC with a total market value of about $61.5 billion and a 24-hour trading volume of approximately $9.2 billion.
However, market analysis suggests that under the "Genius Act" framework, Tether's compliance is lower than Circle's, which is one reason why Circle was prioritized for listing. Paolo Ardoino also responded to questions about "offshore structure" and auditing in the interview, stating that he has communicated well with the Big Four accounting firms, but also noted that "this will be a long journey".
Notably, Paolo Ardoino specifically shared Tether's investment logic in agriculture, dairy, video platforms, and brain-computer interface technology companies.
According to Tether's website, on April 30 this year, Tether announced the acquisition of Latin American agricultural enterprise Adecoagro, whose main business covers sugar, ethanol, dairy, and crop production in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, with 210,400 hectares of farmland and multiple industrial facilities.
In the interview, Paolo Ardoino stated, "We are exploring how to demonstrate to agricultural enterprises and commodity producers (such as wheat, rice, milk, etc.) how to use stablecoins for international trade. For example, Adecoagro sells products to Asia and the United States, and to make these sales more efficient, they are beginning to consider using stablecoins to complete transactions."
Tether's latest investment is the acquisition of a 31.9% stake in the Canadian gold royalty company Elemental Altus Royalties on June 12. Tether stated that this investment is to "integrate long-term stable assets like gold and Bitcoin into its ecosystem", serving both as a hedging method and part of its commitment to building a resilient digital economic infrastructure.
Below is the translated interview text (edited) by "Bright Company":
[The rest of the translation continues in the same professional manner, maintaining the specified translations for specific terms.]Paolo: I love competition. But I believe the competition will mainly focus on competing with our second-largest competitor, Circle, rather than us. The reason is that all companies announcing they will do stablecoins come from traditional financial systems. The success of USDT lies in our understanding that 3 billion people in the world do not have bank accounts. These people are not bad; they are very good, just not noticed by banks due to poverty. To interest banks, you must contribute at least $150 in fees and commissions annually. But if you live in a country with a daily per capita income of $1.34, or in Africa, with a monthly salary of only $80, you cannot possibly give banks $150 a year. So all stablecoins created by traditional financial companies will be offered to their existing customers. We serve 3 billion people - these 3 billion people are viewed as a "niche market" by the banking system. Many competitors say Tether serves the banks' "niche market", but half the world's population should not be called "niche". We built ourselves through grassroots efforts. We have built many service kiosks in Africa, and by 2030, we will have 100,000 kiosks in Africa, providing power to people in small African villages through solar panels. We already have hundreds of thousands of touchpoints in Latin America, providing stablecoin and Bitcoin education.
Host: I've always been curious because Tether has always been very focused on offline payments, where users can pay with stablecoins in their crypto wallets via mobile phones, but many places in the world are still cash economies. So stablecoins are indeed important for areas without banking services, transfers, and safe storage, especially in high-inflation economies, but are people really willing to pay with cryptocurrencies in physical stores?
Paolo: They are increasingly willing. We now have about 420 million users, with 30 million new wallets added each quarter, almost like Facebook in its early days. This proves that money is the best social network. In fact, even in the poorest countries, more and more people can afford cheap smartphones that can still run wallets. Through word of mouth, our user base is rapidly growing. All competitors focus on institutional clients, but we have established millions of touchpoints with the real world, starting from the streets, not from ivory towers.
Host: Speaking of this, I met a great developer in South Africa, Kgothatso Ngako, who integrated Lightning into mobile payments, allowing people to send Bitcoin via SMS without data. Is this technology similar to what you're doing, enabling payment without data terminals?
Paolo: We support many such terminals that can accept Bitcoin Lightning payments and USDT stablecoin payments. This is one of our different exploration directions. At the same time, by establishing service kiosks in Africa, we can directly contact people who receive remittances in villages (such as from Europe or the United States), and teach them to store funds on smartphones, and then they will pass the knowledge to the entire village. We spread through word of mouth, by practically verifying our technology in the smallest, most remote villages in Africa. If it works there, it will work everywhere else.
Host: You welcome competition and are not worried about new players entering the market. I'm thinking about the Wall Street Journal report saying that large Wall Street banks are considering launching a unified digital dollar, like JP Morgan and Citibank, but they would compete for Circle's market share, as Tether focuses on emerging markets.
Paolo: We work hard on the streets every day, with full teams doing education and collaborating with local partners. JP Morgan will never go to a small African village to teach people how to use their stablecoin. This is our daily routine. JP Morgan and these companies will only sell stablecoins to already wealthy people, which is why I believe stablecoins in the US are "nice to have" but not essential. In the US, you have ten different payment methods, competition is fierce, and the payment network is the best, with the US dollar being the best payment rail. But outside the US, things are not so good, people crave US dollars, but cash dollars are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain. So the best way to hold dollars is USDT. But no one is paying attention to this market, only we are.
Host: Have you ever thought about leaving the Cayman Islands now that you've grown Tether to its current scale?
Paolo: Actually, we have now moved from BVI (British Virgin Islands) to El Salvador, where our company is now registered. El Salvador is currently the only country with comprehensive and intelligent stablecoin regulation. European stablecoin regulation (MiCA) is terrible. They require stablecoin issuers to put 60% of reserves in uninsured cash deposits. Look at what happened to our main competitor at Silicon Valley Bank in 2023 - they had $3 billion in uninsured cash deposits at Silicon Valley Bank, and when the bank collapsed, they almost died, and later FDIC saved the bank. So stablecoins were saved. But you should buy Treasury bonds, not put money in uninsured cash. The MiCA license requires you to put uninsured cash, so we decided not to apply because it's a terrible license. El Salvador now has the most comprehensive and safest regulatory system. The US will soon catch up and have a good regulatory system. Until then, we can only play the hand we're dealt.
Host: I previously chatted with Bo Hines, who is in charge of the Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets, and he said Tether is the seventh-largest buyer of US Treasury bonds and one of the highest historical holders. Once the Genius Act or other stablecoin bills pass, US Treasury demand will surge overnight.
... Do you have any concerns about the Genius Act? Do you support other pending legislation?
Paolo: I think the Genius Act is very reasonable and comprehensive. It's crucial to establish appropriate rules for stablecoins because stablecoins are the most powerful application of blockchain technology.
Host: Currently, Tether regularly publishes self-attestation reports about ledger transparency. Will you disclose more in the future, given past controversies and settlements?
Paolo: To clarify, no stablecoin issuer, or meaningful stablecoin issuer, has done a complete audit of reserves. All stablecoin issuers - including our largest competitors - have only done self-attestation. In the past, media always picked on us, but this is not a Tether problem; all major stablecoin companies have not done complete audits, only self-attestation. Let me explain: in 2022, Senator Warren sent an open letter to all audit firms, telling them not to touch cryptocurrencies. At that time, the OCC was also trying to suppress cryptocurrencies. Now the situation has changed, but in the past, the Big Four audit firms were absolutely impossible to sit down with stablecoin companies, not just us, but other companies as well. Now the government's attitude has changed and they are beginning to embrace cryptocurrencies.
Just in the past month and a half, we have started very positive dialogues with some firms from the Big Four. This will be a long process, but it's currently very positive, at least we can start a dialogue. We have open discussions with them. I'm very confident we will achieve a complete audit. I love transparency; I'm the most transparency-driven person in the company. If you look at our self-attestation, it's more detailed than our competitors', disclosing all different investment categories, how much gold, Bitcoin, other assets, and Treasury bonds we have. Last year, we conducted due diligence for over two years, with a US institution spending two years doing the world's largest-scale due diligence on our reserves, turning over every stone. In early 2024, the due diligence results will be public, confirming our reserves are genuine. They did checks in January and May. I also disclosed two years of all processes and reserves to the New York Attorney General as part of a settlement. We are the most scrutinized company globally. I know our company is transparent and is setting an example for the entire industry, and I'm also correcting many misunderstandings about us.
