The issuer of the largest stablecoin on the crypto market USDT — the company Tether — “came out of the shadows” after many years of criticism, writes RBC Crypto. This became possible with the arrival of the administration of US President Donald Trump thanks to the formation of a new policy of regulatory bodies regarding the cryptocurrency market and stablecoins in particular. For example, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that stablecoins are the key to preserving the dollar as the dominant reserve currency in the world.
On March 12, the company's head, Paolo Ardoino, visited the United States for the first time, attending a conference of the Cantor Fitzgerald bank in New York.
“We've been through hell. People said if I came to the US I'd be arrested. But we're still here,” Bloomberg quotes the company's CEO as saying. In his speech, Ardoino called Tether “the last bastion of the US dollar.”
Since its inception in 2015, Tether and its flagship product USDT have been the subject of intense debate and controversy over the company's reserves and solvency, as well as the use of USDT for illegal purposes. Since 2019, Tether executives and the company itself have been the subject of a legal investigation by U.S. regulators. In 2021, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) settled claims against Tether and its affiliated crypto exchange Bitfinex, ordering the companies to pay fines totaling $42.5 million.
In recent years, Tether has secured the backing of major US bank Cantor Fitzgerald and its former CEO Howard Lutnick, who was chosen by Trump as Secretary of Commerce. Since 2021, the bank has been acting as a custodian of Treasury bonds held by Tether and used as collateral for USDT and other stablecoins.
In early 2024, Latnik confirmed that his company was managing Tether assets and also stated that it had all the declared reserves. And in late November 2024, it became known that Cantor had acquired 5% of Tether shares for about $600 million.
At the same time, Ardoino began to actively declare cooperation with law enforcement agencies, as well as the complete dependence of USDT on the US authorities. The head of Tether also noted for Coindesk that the company cooperates with the FBI, the US Secret Service, and also has letters of thanks from the Department of Justice. In total, the company cooperates with 180 government agencies around the world.
“Wherever you hold Treasuries, they're going to end up in the Federal Reserve's account,” Ardoino said, adding that if the U.S. wanted to destroy a company, it could do so with the push of a button.
Moreover, since 2024, Tether has publicly and repeatedly stated that it will comply with US sanctions. As a company representative noted to Cointelegraph, “Tether respects the OFAC list and is prepared to act promptly to freeze sanctioned addresses.”
USDT tokens, like other centralized stablecoins, have the ability to freeze assets at the blockchain level on any crypto wallets at any time. According to Dune, Tether has frozen more than 2.1 thousand addresses for a total of over $1.37 billion, as of mid-March.
One such case was the Russian crypto exchange Garantex. On March 6, it reported that Tether, the issuer of the largest stablecoin by capitalization USDT, blocked cryptocurrency in the exchange's wallets in the amount of 2.5 billion rubles. US authorities accuse the platform of money laundering, assisting criminal organizations, and violating sanctions.
Investments
As part of his trip to the US, Ardoino also presented the current projects the company is working on, including in the areas of education, artificial intelligence, and real-world asset (RWA) tokenization.
“The outlook for this year is also excellent,” Ardoino said.
Tether's investment activities have gone far beyond the crypto market. The company reported that it invested more than half of its net profit last year, and plans to invest at least half in 2025. One of these investments, worth $775 million, was YouTube competitor Rumble. Tether also acquired a minority stake in Juventus Football Club, the exact size and amount of the deal were not disclosed.
Источник: cryptocurrency.tech
