Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether and CTO of Bitfinex, reveals how he built one of the most profitable companies in history - generating approximately $100 million in profit per employee.
Tether created USDT, the world's most-used stablecoin, providing financial access to 3 billion unbanked people in countries facing extreme inflation and financial instability.
While the world gets darker, Paulo built a "stable company" focused on bringing stability through democratized finance - and it's paying off. Last year, Tether made $13.7 billion.
__________________________________
THE SHIFT NEWSLETTER
💡...
Questions asked in this interview
12
0:00How did you build the most profitable business per employee in the world?
8:57How much of Tether's mission today is linked to something that you might not have had when you were younger?
14:23You wrote: 'Coding is unlike any other form of expression, liberates the human imagination, and enables us to build entirely new worlds with endless possibilities.' Can you elaborate?
15:54What is a stablecoin if you had to explain it to your mom?
20:08Doing about $100 million in profit per employee per year. Did you think about that?
We are living in a moment where the interest rates are high. Up to 2022, interest rates were not high, so we could not predict that. All these situations are definitely helping our profitability, and we believe that expanding different areas will help our profitability long term.
Paolo Ardoino, the CEO of Tether, the company behind USDT and one of the most profitable in the world. He's also the CTO of Bitfinex, a leading global crypto exchange. What the hell would you do with $20 billion? You got them tomorrow.
Tether made last year 13.7 billion and this year we probably make the same. It's not about the money, it's about sending a message. The message that we want to send is that the mission of Tether is probably 100-fold from here. And I think Tether has the capital, the philosophy and the tech innovation to do whatever it wants.
These companies have hundreds of millions of fans all around the world. So it's a simple way to reach people everywhere without distinction rich or poor.
There's a common pattern amongst my guests. They have something that happened in their life that gave them a chip on the shoulder. I'm sure that Tether's mission today is linked to something that might not have had when you were younger.
Hi everyone. This is the little bit that I know none of you like that can help us make a huge difference for this show and we want to take it next. 71% of the people who regularly watch When Shift Happens have not subscribed. And so all I'd ask you if you want to make a huge difference is the following: if you've seen this show before and you like it, help me, help my team, hit the subscribe button and we'll continue to build this show for you. Thank you.
I'm on matcha because if I take too much coffee, the caffeine kind of give me anxiety and I'm kind of like don't have that.
No, it's the Italian side. Yes. It's the Italian blood that dissolves the coffee and brings it to every single body cell. But I don't get affected on sleep. I don't sleep much anyway.
So I have a very particular routine. I try to sleep at least 5 hours per night but the problem is that they are fragmented because I keep on the notifications and so working like every 1 hour I wake up and check the notifications and then go back to sleep.
Ardoino, P. (2025, October 16). USDT Founder: Bitcoin, Gold, Stablecoin, & Tether, the Most Profitable Company in the World | EP 143 [Interview transcript]. When Shift Happens. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1015850/
MLA
Paolo Ardoino. "USDT Founder: Bitcoin, Gold, Stablecoin, & Tether, the Most Profitable Company in the World | EP 143." When Shift Happens, 16 Oct. 2025. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1015850/.
BibTeX
@misc{ardoino2025_1015850,
author = {Paolo Ardoino},
title = {USDT Founder: Bitcoin, Gold, Stablecoin, \& Tether, the Most Profitable Company in the World | EP 143},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, When Shift Happens. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2025},
month = {oct},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1015850/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
