If you think Tether is just a stablecoin company, this conversation is going to completely change how you see the future of money. In this interview, Paolo Arduino breaks down why Tether is launching a new US-focused stablecoin called USAT. How regulation is finally caught up to technology.
We built the technology and we sit on it for 11 years before seeing the world recognizing it.
And why stablecoins are no longer a niche crypto experiment. They're becoming core financial infrastructure.
Today we have 536 million users. It's not anymore about something that a couple of geeks are using. Well, it was never about that, right? It was hundreds of millions of people around the world using USDT as their digital dollar.
But then Bo Hines explains the part nobody in finance wants to say out loud. This isn't crypto versus banks anymore. The real battle is about liquidity, distribution, and who becomes the rails of the next financial system.
A lot of folks that have really wanted to enter the Tether ecosystem from the US have been looking for a vehicle to do that. And that's what USAT provides. But it unlocks this network of liquidity and distribution for folks here that they've been clamoring for access for years, but they haven't been able to participate in. And so eventually, you're just going to see basically stablecoin sandwiches built, deposits will be tokenized, everything will be moving through stables.
But this conversation goes way beyond money. Paolo explains why Tether isn't just building financial products. They're building AI infrastructure, decentralized telecommunications, and peer-to-peer energy systems designed for the billions of people who've been locked out of traditional systems. If you want to understand where money, banking, and technology are actually headed, straight from the people building it, then you need to listen to this conversation.
That's dope.
That's dope. Paulo, I want to start kind of where we always do, which is how incredible of a year you just had. Or usually we talk quarterly, so I should say how incredible of a quarter you just had. But 2025, the numbers are once again absolutely astounding. Over 10 billion in profit. I mean, we could go through it, but I think it's clear to say that Tether continues to be on the rise even after an incredible few years.
Yeah. I mean, 2024, of course, was amazing. 2025 was incredible. It was an important year because the GENIUS Act passed—very relevant for Bo here as well—but it's the year of the legitimization of a technology that Tether built in 2014. So when you see what you built recognized by the most powerful country in the world, that means something, right? It meant a lot to our entire organization, created a lot of excitement for the new opportunities. Because now it's not anymore about something that a couple of geeks are using. Well, it was never about that, right? It was hundreds of millions of people around the world using USDT as their digital dollar. But now that it became recognized, what you can build upon this technology is almost infinite. And so that was probably the biggest achievement as an organization—to see that happening. And of course, the announcement of USAT in September. Tether is building many different products in different areas. We've been involved in commodity trading, to AI, to sports, to building wallet technology, tokenization technology. We are spreading ourselves in 10, 15, 20 different directions that are very relevant for the current moment in time that humanity is living in. And so that's the part that excites me the most—how the company is continuing to grow. So it's not a stablecoin company, Tether is the stable company. A company that builds technology to empower society to remain stable.
So Bo, you seem to be in a very interesting spot. Obviously you were pivotal in crafting GENIUS and getting it passed in your previous role, and now you're on the other side working with Tether to have a compliant stablecoin in the US in USAT. What I'm interested in here is the legislation passed—do you have any critiques of it? Because obviously, in a perfect world, wouldn't the original Tether be compliant and everybody would be happy and we'd have hundreds of billions of dollars in liquidity there? Why are we in a position after the GENIUS Act to create a new stablecoin?
Well, I will say that I think that world will exist, right? That's why reciprocity is in there. And so the process that's ongoing is Treasury's fleshing out exactly what those reciprocity standards are going to end up looking like, and from there I'm very confident that USDT will receive reciprocity. I think for USAT, obviously being the first GENIUS-compliant product that exists in the marketplace, we have a unique first-mover's advantage to help onboard institutions into kind of this brave new world in the financial system. And so what we're doing for our customers is we're giving them an on-ramp into the Tether ecosystem, which is a tremendously powerful one. As Paolo just described, I've been blown away just from being on the internal side of things how organized this company is and how much is actually being worked on. Tether is probably the most prolific technological company that exists today. And it's a privilege to be a part of it. With USAT, we're building and working on so many different partnerships, many of which are extremely exciting as we start to see the merger of TradFi and this crypto ecosystem come together. And we hope to be the tip of the spear on that. Tether is the most important player in the ecosystem, and what we're doing is building an on-ramp to the US capital markets to that system. And I think it's going to be very well received. We just launched less than a week ago. We're starting to build our liquidity, bringing our partners in, and you'll start seeing these very exciting partnerships be announced over the coming weeks. And I think your audience will be very impressed and very pleased by what they see.
When you talk about partnerships, is this effectively institutions that are going to need to have a stablecoin plan or utilize stablecoins, who either would have the option to create their own stablecoin—which at this point I don't understand why any institution would do that, but we do know that there are those who intend to do that—or partner with some sort of incumbent that exists already and just move forward?
Well, look, the power of incumbency is extremely strong, and what you'll find is that really two things matter: distribution and liquidity. We're working to make USAT interoperable with USDT via a variety of mechanisms, whether that be through Anchorage or through pools on exchanges. Folks have the optionality of whether or not to engage with a US GENIUS-compliant product or with the most powerful token that exists in the crypto ecosystem itself in terms of transfer of value. What we're doing with a lot of these institutions as they start to flesh out what this brave new world is going to look like for them is help them understand the technology and how it benefits their customers. We're talking about increased efficiency. We're talking about transaction costs being lowered at a tremendous rate. There's no better company to work with than Tether with these products because we already have these things built. Banks are starting to realize it's probably not the best idea to issue their own stablecoin, considering that other banks don't want to settle with them in their own product. It does nothing to benefit the counterparty. We're providing an agnostic product that already has the distribution and liquidity there so that money can flow freely. As we thought back to this legislative process, David and I pushed hard on the fact that GENIUS needed to go first. It's a testament to what Paolo just described—what they built is being recognized as what's going to undergird our new financial system. These products are going to be enormous, and the integration has barely begun to scratch the surface. We're certainly talking to large-scale institutions, merchants, and thinking about how we build product utility and give the consumer the best optionality for product use.
It's such a 180, Paulo, because in our early conversations, you couldn't get anyone to talk to us, right? I mean, the industry as a whole, but certainly Tether. Banks just weren't even thinking about this—they viewed it as competitive. There was no real chance that it was going to become compliant or become legal. And now here we are. I would imagine that the floodgates are open and everybody's calling because they have no idea what the hell they're doing.
Yeah. I think the time preference of Tether is different from anyone else, right? So we built a technology and we sit on it for 11 years before seeing the world recognizing it. You were very helpful to try to explain to the world the importance of stablecoins—you hosted me many times—no one gave a damn until the GENIUS Act passed. But we never stopped. We were relentless and we continue to believe in the importance of what we were doing. Today we have 536 million users across the world. That is the biggest financial inclusion success story in the history of humanity, and that is probably the thing I'm most proud of. It still needs education. Banks definitely saw it as a threat—the horse industry was seeing cars as a threat. But now banks actually can adopt this technology and build new amazing products. They can have 24/7 trading. They can have instant settlements at the speed of light. The new avenues for monetization and growth for banks are just insane. They just have to realize it. They need to hire talent that understands how to embed these products within their ecosystem. Bo is doing a fantastic job engaging with different financial institutions that are actually very interested in understanding what is possible. They want to leapfrog technology that was built 40 years ago in COBOL. Now they have the chance to leapfrog 40 years and adopt in a second the most elegant technology layer for money ever built.
Are there any risks associated with stablecoins if people do them the wrong way that people are not paying attention to? Because we can talk about every bank in the world creating their own stablecoin. It seems like somebody's going to blow it some way, shape, or form if they do that, right?
Well, we saw in 2023 different banks that blew up, like Silicon Valley Bank, because they had the wrong duration, maturity for US treasuries. Having US treasuries is not necessarily the holy grail—it's also the maturity. You need short-term maturity so that your treasury is resilient to changes in the interest rate environment. I think it was Peter Thiel who said you have to think about a problem for at least 10,000 hours to become an expert in it. So it will be important for new institutions, the international institutions, to hire people that have long-term experience in stablecoins to make sure they don't redo the mistakes. I hope we're not going to see a Terra built by a bank. History is there for a reason, and it should be respected, understood, and studied before making the same mistakes.
So Bo, coming over to the other side and being on team Tether instead of trying to craft the legislation, what pain points do you see with the educational process that we were just discussing with these institutions? How broad is the scale of their understanding? Are some people coming to you and saying literally 'What's a stablecoin and what do I do?' Or are they more advanced at this point and saying 'We have a plan but we want to tweak it'?
I'll be honest with you. I think probably three of the multinationals are pretty well-versed in the process of integration and what stablecoins provide both the bank and their customers. They've started to develop infrastructure, but they're still looking for partners. If you start going down the totem pole in terms of market scale—regionals, super-regionals, community banks—the knowledge gap begins to widen. But that's not to say it's not worth pursuing those folks, because a lot of Americans like bank optionality and community banks, and they need access to the same products. We're watching this fear model play out with clarity—you're watching banks grapple with the fact that stablecoin adoption is widespread and will be domestic, and that scares them because of deposit flight. But I think it's going to work in the inverse. As banks develop a better understanding of product integrations and choose the right partners, which I continually say is Tether, they're going to have tremendous success not only in keeping deposits but upgrading systems and giving customers access to the best financial products. It gives them more freedom and power as consumers. We're not just focused on multinationals—we want to talk to regionals and community banks as well about what this integration could look like and what it could mean long-term. Everything takes time. We're still on the precipice of this law just passing. But I feel very confident about where things are going long-term. There's an appetite there.
You alluded to all these incredible new products that they can create utilizing stablecoins, but I would also imagine there's plumbing being adopted behind the scenes that's not making the news. Quite a few companies like Stripe and Robinhood allude to using stablecoins, but they're just using them for internal payments cross-border on weekends. It seems like a two-pronged thing—stablecoins that threaten bank deposits in their mind, but also just wanting to move money faster and cheaper. Where's the push and pull between those two things? Because some of them are just going to want to keep it to themselves, right?
Sure. From an intrabank settlement perspective, you can talk to some of the largest banks overseas—in Asia or other markets—and they're very excited about stablecoin adoption. We're undergirding this brave new world of finance in which we'll probably have 24/7 trading and 24/7 markets. That's a great thing for global trade. Banks can settle over the weekends. If you're a bank in Asia, you can now participate in US capital markets past 2 p.m. on a Friday because you don't have to worry about settlement. It unlocks a wide variety of ways they can engage with the US, and that's a good thing for our system as well. Banks see the benefit of using these products for their own internal settlement metrics, but they'll slowly start to recognize their consumers are going to demand these products too. Everyone wants to move money at will whenever they want at a cost-effective manner. Adoption is inevitable. What we saw with GENIUS was that this was the product in demand. It's a testament to what Paolo and team built at Tether, and that's why it's so exciting to be here. I get to be on the other side of GENIUS—this is what we envisioned but now we're putting it into practice.
You've got to be having more fun the last two months.
I'll tell you, Scott, I don't envy being in the market structure debate. I think there are actually conversations happening at the White House today, and I feel for all the folks involved because I know how tumultuous of a process that can be. But look, it's the pressure cooker of a system, and ultimately you get to the right place. I think they will. I'm very confident they will, and I think it'll be good for the ecosystem at large.
Yeah. Paulo, I love when you say it's a stable company and not a stablecoin, of course. You guys have notoriously really started showing that, right? With massive AI investments, developing decentralized AI platforms that align very well with what you said about financial inclusion. There's a lot of people who can't afford a couple hundred bucks to use AI, and you're opening that to them in the same way you've allowed inclusion to the dollar into the financial system. So with this large web of things you're now investing in and developing, how does that all feed the beast here with Tether itself, but really being that stable company?
The user base of USDT—the obvious user base—is four billion people. There are four billion people that are underserved, underbanked, left out by the traditional financial system. The very same people that cannot afford to keep a bank account open are the same ones that will not have the ability to purchase a subscription for a prominent AI platform. The risk I see is that we talk about wealth gap and the huge disparity across emerging markets and the Western world. We have to realize that stable intelligence is very important as well. If who has access to AI services will become 10 or 100 times more intelligent, because they'll have access to speed-of-light information and problem solving, how can society remain stable if half the population will not become as intelligent? That is a huge risk to the stability of the world. What we learned with USDT is the power of disintermediation, the power of bringing tools directly in the hands of the people, the power of peer-to-peer. The same concept applies to energy. We built peer-to-peer decentralized energy in Africa with hundreds of kiosks with solar panels on top and rechargeable batteries inside. We sell a subscription for 3 USDT per month. A person in a village can recharge the battery four times. We have 800 kiosks now and 1 million users paying to get these batteries—and for them it's a lifeline. Without a battery there is no energy. Without energy you cannot access anything digital. We built decentralized energy because you can't have centralized energy in Africa—villages are too far apart. Telecommunications—we built Holepunch, a peer-to-peer telecommunications system. With AI, how we fix the AI disparity is with AI that is local-first, that runs on smartphones and any laptop, that can scale based on hardware available. That is our way to build technology that is resilient, distributed, and helpful, with no strings attached. We feel very lucky as an organization. We made plenty of money. We're not optimizing for yet another buck. We're optimizing for positive impact on society.
How much do you think Americans will utilize USAT or USDT outside of the financial system? Or is it more of a focus on bringing stablecoins into the US financial system? Because we have a relatively stable financial system. Most people in the United States have a bank account—it's certainly not the same as in Africa. But that doesn't mean I want to spend two hours, which I did last week, trying to send a donation to my kid's school with JP Morgan fraud-alerting me two times over a small donation from my own bank account. Nobody wants to do this. As stable and safe as our money is, the pain points are real. So do you see most Americans using stablecoins through their bank, or using it in the way Paulo is describing, or is it going to be a blend?
I think it's going to be both. It's funny because everyone talks about how US rails are about 95% efficient. That's true, but it's relative. We still experience pain points at very inopportune times. It's still very expensive to move money in the US, whether through Venmo or another service, especially from a card or bank account in terms of settlement. I think Americans will pick up on stablecoin integration from a retail level, but you do that by packaging the products in ways that allow engagement without having to think about the crypto ecosystem. We've talked to payroll companies that front-run payroll for big-box retailers. Folks making minimum wage on bimonthly pay—it's really hard. With stables, the company can pay almost on a daily basis. That's a huge unlock, especially for folks in remittances. You can automate a 10% remittance out of your daily paycheck to family overseas. We're talking to folks that do mortgage origination, giving people the optionality to put a down payment in stablecoins. But it will be a blend ultimately—it's the merger of the retail space with traditional finance. Eventually, I envision a world where you have access to a stablecoin wallet through your banking UX. You can do a checking account swap and send money anywhere in the world instantly at basically zero cost. But I also want to provide retail activity opportunities—walking into a big-box retailer and paying in stables. It makes life simpler and saves money. Even card companies like Visa and Mastercard are looking at stable integrations—it saves them money on the back end they can pass to consumers. Adoption will be extremely widespread here domestically, blending crypto into the traditional financial world in a way that's really positive.
