Thank you everybody for being here. I'm going to introduce Bo Hines, who's the CEO of Tether here in the United States. And if I could start off with just a little icebreaker. I learned earlier today that Bo is from Charlotte, North Carolina, and he is back there where Tether's headquarters is, but his life story to get to a senior executive position in crypto is not a straight line. And would you mind giving us a quick minute of how you found your way to Tether and why you thought it was the right move at this point in your career?
Yeah, absolutely. I'm not sure this panel is going to be as exciting as eating the hot sauce and I can promise you our barbecue in North Carolina is not nearly that hot. So, I'm glad Luigi and Frank took that one on. But, you know, I had an interesting kind of road to get to the White House where I was working on crypto policy. I was actually a football player at North Carolina State my freshman year in college. Ended up playing in the Bitcoin Bowl and that's what sparked my interest in crypto initially and you know just like many others was more or less just a retail investor buying Bitcoin, trading it, selling it, doing the things you shouldn't be doing with Bitcoin in 2014 rather than just holding it. But that kind of set me on a path where I ended up studying this stuff in law school at Wake Forest and you know I became part of an investment group that I worked with with my father and a couple of other partners and always stayed tangentially related to this. And so when the president got elected, he had reached out, I knew several people in his circle from my time in politics and they said, 'Hey, can you come help us figure this stuff out? We need to create a road map and a plan for what this new regulation is going to look like and what this brave new frontier of finance is really going to be.' And at that point I had the pleasure of meeting with David Sacks and we started formulating our strategy and that's really what led to the Genius Act and you know unfortunately the Clarity Act, we saw what happened there yesterday. But I'm extremely confident in all the administration officials and the work they're doing. Paul Atkins at the SEC, Mike Cel at CFTC, you know they're going to be able to put together something that's extremely comprehensive that helps the industry move forward. And you know I'd be remiss not to say that I felt like Patrick, who was my predecessor there, did a phenomenal job in the White House. I mean he was managing quite a few different parties just like we were on Genius but it was even more intricate just given all the regulatory principles that needed to be addressed and I'm proud of their work and I think they should be too.
Great. Thank you. So I'm going to, I might circle back to the Clarity Act at the end, but if we could dive into a little bit of other stuff and before we get to the announcement that came out earlier today, where Avalanche and Tether are working together, big announcement this morning, I don't know if I don't think Luigi was able to touch on it during his spicy talk, but maybe we can a little bit. I want to take a step back and talk a little bit about the bigger picture, which is bringing the regulated dollar to life and the role that stablecoins play, not just in the crypto and blockchain world, but how it's working its way into the broader financial system into institutions. Really two questions. What does it take for Tether in particular? What are you looking at in terms of the market opportunity? And the second question is, how do you convince institutions and users of stablecoins not just to dip their toe in the water, but to begin to use them at scale in a way that would have an impact more broadly on the system?
Look, it's a very intricate question. Honestly, I'll start with kind of what we were thinking about with the Genius Act and kind of choosing that bill first because I think it lays the groundwork to answer this question. You know, David and I really had a couple of decisions. We could have combined the stablecoin bill with market structure, tried to jam it through all at once. But we felt like in order to get to this, you know, next phase of finance, in order to make sure that the US would have the most efficient form of money, stablecoins were really starting to matter. And obviously you know Tether being the birthplace of stablecoins was a huge result of that. And what we looked at was basically you know all the dreams that the technologists in the space have had for quite some time whether it be 24/7 markets, tokenized securities, all of that great stuff. And we said okay that's fantastic. We understand what we can do with this technology but how do we make it efficient? How do we make it usable? And how do we make it accessible for institutions in a safe and secure way? And I felt like with the Genius Act, we addressed most all of those questions because what we did is we created the on and off ramps for tokenized securities and what this new future would be. And so I think that as you look at this and you start talking to banks and other large financial institutions, what they're really looking for is one, the regulatory state to be completely cemented and secure, which obviously Treasury is still working through some rulemaking on Genius, which we should see in the next 6 months or so. But two, they need a trusted digital dollar that they can use to get in and out of these tokenized assets, do it efficiently, quickly, and really have this real-time market that lives 24/7, 7 days a week. I always say when I'm meeting with banks, I said, you know, I have the luxury of inviting you to the insufferable world of 24/7 markets now. And I'm going to continue to push you in that direction. And so, you know, I think that the conversations we're having just from a Tether perspective have been extremely productive with the banking folks, with others that are engaged in real world assets and everything else that's happening on chain. But the biggest thing that we needed to do was help instruct them on how this new system would actually function. And I think that's what's lost on a lot of people. You know, you go to these Goliath institutions and you think, 'Wow, they have, you know, thousands and thousands of employees.' And you think that they have a real plan for this stuff, but everything moved forward very quickly. And so I think there's still a lot of catch up to be had in the sense of actually understanding the technology, how it can be used to benefit their institution and their customers, and then the most practical ways of integration. And so that's really been the bulk of my job at Tether over the past year is working with these institutions, helping them understand where our product fit can be and explaining to them what it can do for them and their customers. And so you know, we feel like we've done a very successful job of that. But I think that a lot of these institutions are starting to catch up now. They have digital asset teams. They're actually working on real infrastructure that can be utilized. They're picking partners, whether it be Avalanche, whether it be in lending markets, real world assets, you know, all these things are coming to life. And so what we're doing is saying, look, we have the deepest liquidity. We have the best distribution. I mean, that's what Tether brings to the marketplace. And obviously with a recognizable product like this and the safety and security around it with USAT and the guardrails that are there around Genius, I think it's a very, very helpful recipe for success as we continue to push this innovation forward. And so you know I'm excited about the future. I think that we're going to start seeing real adoption of stablecoin usage whether it be in tandem with tokenized security adoption. But even before that I mean the stuff that we just announced today is a great example.
What a perfect segue. All right. So, to talk a little bit about the partnership today, I want to frame the question and lead into what we're doing together with the following question. Tether has the very privileged position of being one of the giants in the market. You've got a wealth of opportunities that you're faced with and there's always an opportunity cost of where to spend your resources, who to partner with, the use cases to focus on. There are a million different things that you could do and that Tether is in demand for. And earlier today, we made the announcement that AB is launching V4 of their RWA hub on Avalanche and that the inaugural stablecoin is Tether. That's not something you had to do. That's something that you decided through whatever internal and external deliberations you had that you wanted to be a part of this and that you thought this was a useful use case to put your weight and your credibility behind. Can you talk me through that process a little bit, how you viewed the partnership and why the use case you thought was important for Tether?
