Crypto

Here Comes Tether

With support at the highest levels of government, $122 billion in US Treasuries and a new American enterprise underway, the crypto company’s billionaire CEO says Tether is here to stay.

By Ryan Weeks, Todd Gillespie and Annie Massa

In a darkened San Salvador hotel ballroom, Paolo Ardoino, the billionaire CEO of Tether Holdings SA, set out a series of bleak predictions. Flanked by pictures of storm clouds, he prophesied worldwide geopolitical chaos, the end of the monetary system and societal collapse. Tether, Ardoino said, is building itself to flourish in this coming apocalypse.

Indeed, these are boom times for the company behind the world’s most popular stablecoin, a “digital dollar” that facilitates crypto trading and money transfers around the world. Tether said it posted more than $10 billion in profit last year — a stunning return for a company of just 300 people — and is rapidly using its cash to take stakes in a global portfolio of companies. And with Donald Trump’s return to the White House, the firm now has an open door to the richest and most sophisticated financial market.

Tether is “almost like a mix between Google and Blackstone,” Ardoino said in an interview with Bloomberg News in San Salvador, where his company hosted a conference in January. Tether moved its global headquarters to the Central American capital last year. “We have this huge financial arm, and we can really create positive impact.”

Ardoino has now moved the US to the center of his expansion plans, with the support of allies in the Trump administration, including Commerce Secretary and longtime Tether banker Howard Lutnick, whose family firm is invested in the company. Tether launched a new token for the US market in January and has beefed up lobbying efforts in Washington. It’s also been courting investors worldwide, trying to establish its valuation at $500 billion, which would make it one of the world’s most highly valued private companies.

It is a dizzying reversal of fortunes. During President Joe Biden’s tenure, Tether was a target of investigation by federal authorities, Bloomberg has reported. Since 2021, its flagship token, USDT, and affiliated exchange, Bitfinex, have been banned from doing business in New York.

Critics say the coin’s popularity in the criminal underground is undiminished, and the widening war in the Middle East has renewed focus on its popularity with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Despite broad financial sanctions on Iran, USDT underpins its thriving crypto economy; in January, a case study from research firm TRM Labs detailed how the IRGC processed roughly $1 billion in crypto transactions from 2023 to 2025, “conducted overwhelmingly in USDT.”

“Tether takes fraud, consumer harm, and the misuse of USDT extremely seriously and maintains a zero-tolerance policy toward illicit activity,” the company said in a statement, adding that it works with law enforcement agencies worldwide and has frozen about $4 billion in USDT tokens at the behest of authorities.

Almost half of that amount has been blacklisted at the request of the US, which has publicly acknowledged Tether’s cooperation. The US government has also signaled, by pausing regulatory actions and pardoning crypto fraudsters, that the industry has far less to fear.

At the same time, lawmakers fast-tracked legislation to encourage stablecoin adoption, spurred on by Tether and its peers and by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has testified that demand for dollar-linked stablecoins will drive demand for government debt, and in turn lower US borrowing costs. Tether is also expected to back a new political spending group ahead of the midterm elections this year, the New York Times reported, which it could do through its new US arm. An entity that identified itself as “Tether America” signed on as a donor to Trump’s White House ballroom project.

Visions of the end times and politicking aside, Tether’s deal-making and fundraising efforts have raised new questions about more simple details of its business model. It doesn’t disclose the full extent of the portfolio that includes more than 140 investments and the company sees as a core part of its business strategy. In its most recent fundraising process, Tether provided additional financials to would-be investors after they asked for more transparency, according to people familiar with the matter.

Using public filings and statements, Bloomberg zeroed in on more than two dozen companies in Tether’s growing portfolio. Many are in the crypto and payments industries:

Others, including some of Tether’s biggest public investments so far, extend the company’s reach to commodities, media, AI, energy and other industries.

The company’s investment chief and primary architect of its vast portfolio, Richard Heathcote, will soon hand the reins to his deputy, Bloomberg reported Thursday. Once a broker at Cantor Fitzgerald’s BGC Group Inc., Heathcote was key to nurturing Tether’s relationship with the US investment bank owned for decades by Lutnick and now by his children.

Though it’s been promising one for years, the company has yet to publish a full audit. Accounting firm BDO provides quarterly attestations to the assets backing USDT. Deloitte last week signed off on the first reserve report from Anchorage Digital Bank NA, which issues Tether’s new token for the US market, USAT.

As for Tether the company, it’s told investors it’s aiming to undergo a full audit by the end of 2026, one of the people said. Ardoino said the company is talking with Big Four auditors: “I will not make a commitment, but it’s super high priority and it’s looking very positive,” he said.

He may not have a choice. Democratic Senator Jack Reed singled out Tether last month in proposing a new law to require the issuers of foreign stablecoins backed by the US dollar to undergo an audit. “I’m not sure anyone has a sense of Tether’s full exposure,” said Arthur Wilmarth, professor emeritus of law at George Washington University, who has written about the potential systemic risks associated with stablecoins. “What’s important is how opaque and hidden much of it is.”

While Ardoino took center stage at the El Salvador event, his US chief, Bo Hines, kept a lower profile. When it was over, the 30-year-old ex-football player and former White House crypto adviser boarded his private jet and headed back to Charlotte, North Carolina, where he’s setting up Tether’s US operations.

Hines, along with former PayPal Holdings Inc. lobbyist Jesse Spiro, has been tasked with promoting Tether in the US. Its new token, USAT, is designed to maintain a steady value of $1 while complying with a law passed in 2025 that pushes US-issued stablecoins to use Treasury bills for their reserves and requires tighter oversight of marketing and compliance.

In emerging markets, Tether’s customers typically want access to dollars or a quick and cheap way to transfer money at home and abroad. But in the US, stablecoins are more likely to gain traction for everyday commerce as a way to avoid the delays and fees imposed by banks and credit cards. Backers point to savings for merchants and customers alike, while skeptics worry over the lack of safeguards and the irreversibility of transactions.

Tether also sees the US as fertile ground for future investments. In his keynote in El Salvador, Ardoino highlighted its stake in Rumble, a video platform popular with conservatives, calling it a “real world example of standing for truth.” The company plans to integrate its stablecoin to facilitate payments for Rumble’s millions of monthly users.

“Now we are investing in other platforms in the United States,” Ardoino said. He declined to name which assets he’s looking at, but added his aim is to reach millions more active users per month on digital platforms in the US, which will lay the foundation for USAT as an “inter-platform payment system.”

As the company translates its business to the US, it appears to be hedging its bets. In Ardoino’s most extreme vision of the future, the dollar loses its dominance — but Tether, insulated by its growing holdings in land, gold and Bitcoin, survives. The other possibility, of course, is that the dollar remains the global reserve currency for the foreseeable future, in which case, it’s to Tether’s advantage to have a robust business and political presence in the US.

Tether’s fortunes are already linked to the US — and vice versa — in a more pedestrian way. The firm has become one of the biggest holders of US Treasuries, which constituted 63% of its $193 billion in reserves at year-end, according to its most recent disclosures. It says it is the 17th largest — and top non-sovereign — holder of the country’s debt, a fact which makes some policymakers nervous.

“Tether reportedly holds over $100 billion in US Treasuries, making it one of the largest holders globally, yet it operates without the direct regulatory oversight we impose on domestic institutions at this scale,” said Carole House, former White House National Security Council special adviser for cybersecurity and critical infrastructure during the Biden administration.

In turn, the yield on Treasuries has funded Tether’s recent dealmaking. Potential investors have asked the company about the consequences of lower interest rates, according to a person familiar with the discussions. The company holds that for every 25 basis point cut by the US Federal Reserve, it would have to issue an additional $10 billion in tokens to keep earnings constant, the person added.

At the same time, a raft of competitors have emerged in the US, and overall demand for USDT along with other stablecoins has flattened in recent months, coinciding with declines in wider crypto markets. The International Monetary Fund warned in 2025 that a run on stablecoins could trigger a selloff in the Treasury market.

Tether’s deep pockets have nonetheless been welcomed by new banking partners beyond the Lutnick family’s Cantor Fitzgerald. Morgan Stanley, BTG Pactual and First Abu Dhabi Bank have all advised on its fundraise — according to people familiar with the matter. The banks declined to comment for this story.

There are more signs the company is seeking the traditional hallmarks of legitimacy. Ardoino last year hired a new chief financial officer, Simon McWilliams. He also brought on Ben Habbel — a luxury property investor who recently took over the Nobu Hotel in London’s Shoreditch neighborhood — as its chief business officer to formalize the company’s internal organization. Senior metals traders from HSBC Holdings Plc have joined to help manage its growing stockpile of gold. Last year Tether bought 70 tons of gold, more than the reported purchases of almost any central bank.

With its relatively small workforce, Tether may be the most profitable company per employee in the world, and Ardoino is fond of touting its leanness and 99% profit margins. Even so, he has tacitly acknowledged the need for more bodies, tripling the size of its workforce in the past 18 months and continuing to hire. Circle Internet Group Inc., Tether’s closest global competitor, employed about 880 people in June 2024, when just $32 billion of its tokens were in circulation.

Ardoino said compliance is Tether’s largest department, with nearly 50 people — one-sixth of the staff — tasked with policing transactions and, when asked, coordinating with law enforcement authorities. Like the overall staffing, that group is also far smaller than the compliance armies employed by banks or even some of its crypto rivals.

Atop its core business, Tether’s leadership is notoriously insular. Ardoino is married to chief operating officer Claudia Lagorio, and several of its executives have more than one role at Tether or its adjacent company, Bitfinex.

Even as he solicits new capital, Ardoino is wary of letting many more outsiders get too close to Tether’s fortunes. To suggestions of a public listing one day, he bristled at the prospect of answering to investors on a quarterly basis. “I don’t want to spend my time every three months to have to optimize making a cent more,” he said. “I want to optimize for impact.”

Unlike many early-stage tech companies, most of Tether’s staff haven’t been given share options, according to people familiar with the firm’s compensation structures. They don’t stand to benefit if Tether secures funding at what would be one of the largest valuations ever achieved by a privately-held company. Its fundraising efforts are dragging on months longer than initially anticipated, but Ardoino says there’s no rush. With the size of its profits, the company doesn’t need the capital and can afford to hold out for its target valuation.

Whether investors buy into Ardoino’s assessment of Tether or the future of humanity is yet to be determined. However, Tether’s growing portfolio, its stockpile of US Treasuries and gold, and its intention to influence American politics have made it impossible to dismiss the company as a crypto novelty.

“A few years ago, when there wasn’t a connection between crypto and traditional finance, that may have not been an issue — but that’s not the case any more,” said Wilmarth, the George Washington University professor. “Now they’re more intertwined than ever.”