"The REAL Battle For Bitcoin & Stables Is Just Getting Started" | Paolo Ardoino & Bo Hines

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 Ardoino breaks down why Tether is launching a new US-focused stablecoin called USAT, how regulation has finally caught up to technology, and why stablecoins are no longer a niche crypto experiment. They're becoming core financial infrastructure.

And why stablecoins are no longer a niche crypto experiment. They're becoming core financial infrastructure.

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. It unlocks this network of liquidity and distribution for folks here that they've been clamoring for access for for years, but they just 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.

Paolo, 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.

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 obviously to have a compliant stablecoin in the US in USAT. What I'm interested in here is the legislation passed. Are there any critiques that you have of it? Because obviously, I think 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 craft or to create a new stablecoin?

Well, I will say that I think that world will exist, right? I mean, 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 issued 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. And so, you know, 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. I mean, you know, 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. You know, we just launched less than a week ago. We're starting to build our liquidity. We're starting to bring our partners in and you'll start seeing in the coming weeks these very exciting partnerships be announced over the course of the coming weeks and I think that 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, I guess, A, 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 B, 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. It's distribution and liquidity. And so, you know, we're working to make USAT interoperable with USDT via a variety of mechanisms, whether that be through Anchorage or issuer or through pools on exchanges. You can create several different unique ways to do this. But with that, you know, 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. So 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 to understand the technology and how it benefits their customers. I mean we're talking about increased efficiency. We're talking about transaction costs being lowered at a tremendous rate. These are all things that they care about and are considering. But look, there's no better company to work with than Tether and with these products because we already have these things built. And so I think that 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 and so we're providing an agnostic product that already has the distribution and liquidity there so that people can actually use it, money can flow freely. And so as we thought back to this legislative process and David and I were deciding, look, where do we go with this, we pushed hard on the fact that Genius needed to go first and it's a testament to what Paolo just described, what they built is being recognized as really what's going to undergird our new financial system and the rails that are going to be there. And so you think about institutional settlements and the way they view it from the interbank settlement perspective, these products are going to be enormous and the integration has barely begun to scratch the surface. And so I think a lot of what we're doing in terms of pitching and building these partnerships is helping to educate and that's really important because they want to be involved. They want to have product adoption occur in a streamlined manner, but they really need to understand the best way to do it. And there's no team that's better at doing that than Tether. And so, you know, we've been doing this for the last several months at this point, but yes, we're certainly talking to large-scale institutions. We're talking to merchants. We're thinking about how we build product utility and give the consumer the best optionality for product use.

It's such a 180, Paolo, because in our early conversations, you couldn't get anyone to talk to us, right? I mean, the industry as a whole, but certainly, you know, Tether, banks just weren't even thinking about this, right? 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.

Are there any risks associated with stablecoins if people do them the wrong way that people are not paying attention to? Right? 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?

Bo, coming over to the other side and being on team Tether instead of trying to craft the legislation, obviously what pain points do you see with the educational process that we were just sort of discussing with these institutions? I mean 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 hey listen we have a plan but we want to tweak it.

You know I'll be honest with you. I think that probably let's say three of the multinationals are pretty well astute and understand the process of integration and what this takes and also what stablecoins provide both the bank and their customers. And so they've started to develop infrastructure around this but they're still looking for partners. I mean, if you start going down the totem pole in terms of just market scale and you're talking to regionals or super regionals or even communities, I think the knowledge gap begins to widen. But that's not to say that it's not worth pursuing those folks as partners because, you know, a lot of Americans like bank optionality. A lot of them like community banks and I still think they need access to the same products. But we're kind of watching this fear model play out with clarity, right? I mean, you're watching this new legislative process on market structure. You're seeing banks grappling with the fact that stablecoin adoption is continuing to be widespread and certainly will be here domestically and that scares them because they're worried about deposit flight. And at the end of the day, I think it's actually going to work in the inverse. I think that as banks start to have a better understanding of what product integrations look like and they choose the right partners, which, you know, I continually say is Tether, they're going to have tremendous success not only in keeping their deposits, but upgrading their systems and allowing their customers to have the best access to the best financial products that possibly exist in the marketplace. And it gives them a lot more freedom and power as a consumer and a customer of their banks. And so, you know, we can't speak to everyone at once, but we're certainly pursuing a path in which we're not just focused on multinationals, where we want to talk to regionals and communities as well. And start talking about what this integration process could look like for them and what it could mean for their customers long term. But, you know, everything takes a little bit of time. I mean, we're still on the precipice of this law just passing back in July. And so, I feel very confident about where things are going long term. There is an appetite there. And I think if they can get to the right place on Genius with the banks and the crypto ecosystem, it certainly provides a pathway for us to have a streamlined process of integration with everyone not just the multinationals.

I mean you alluded to all these incredible new products that they can create utilizing stablecoins obviously but I would also imagine that there's plumbing that's being adopted behind the scenes that is not making the news. Right. I mean, I know that quite a few companies I've seen over time sort of allude to the fact that they're using stablecoins like Stripe and Robinhood, but they're just using them for internal payments on weekends cross borders, right? And so it seems like it's kind of a two-pronged thing. There's the stablecoins that threaten bank deposits in their mind, but there's also, hey, we also probably just want to move money faster and cheaper for our own purposes, right? So where's the push and pull I guess between those two things for all these institutions because I know some of them are just going to want to keep it to themselves, right?

Sure. I mean from an intrabank settlement perspective, you know, you can talk to some of the largest banks overseas whether in Asia or other markets and they're very excited about the prospect of stablecoin adoption. You know, as Paolo hinted at, we're undergirding this brave new world of finance in which we'll probably have 24/7 trading and 24/7 markets. And that's a great thing for global trade. It's a great thing for banks to be able to facilitate trade in this manner. They can settle over the weekends. You know, if you're a bank in Asia, you can now participate in US capital markets post 2 p.m. on a Friday because you don't have to worry about settlement. And so, you know, it unlocks a wide variety of different manners in which they can engage with the US. And that's a good thing for our system as well. And so, you know, banks obviously see the benefit of using these products for their own internal metrics of settlement. But I think they'll slowly start to recognize their consumers are going to have a demand for these products as well. Everyone wants to be able to move money at will whenever they want at a very cost-effective manner. And so adoption is inevitable. And I think that's kind of what we saw just with Genius as we pushed it forward, is 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 now. I mean I get to be a part of the other side of Genius, right? I mean this is what we envisioned but now we're putting it into practice and it's really interesting to see how it's going to play out.

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's actually, you know, 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, I mean, 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. Paolo, I love when you say it's a stable company and not a stablecoin, of course. And you guys have notoriously really started showing that, right? Obviously with massive AI investments, developing, you know, decentralized AI platforms that I think align very well with what you said about financial inclusion. There's a lot of people who can't afford a couple hundred bucks a month or a week or a year to use AI and you're opening that to them in the same kind of way that you've allowed inclusion to the dollar into the financial system. So with this large web of things that you're now investing in and developing, how does that all sort of feed the beast here with Tether itself, but with really being that stable company?

Well, how much do you think that Americans will utilize USAT or USDT outside of the financial system? Or do you think that it's more of a focus on all the things you're doing to bring stablecoins into the United States financial system? Because we have a relatively stable financial system. Obviously, most people able to venture in the United States have a bank account. It's certainly not the same as in Africa. But that doesn't mean that 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, you know, from my own bank account, which happens, right? Nobody wants to do this. Like nobody wants, as stable as it is, as safe as our money is, the pain points are real, right? So do you see this as most Americans are going to use stablecoins through their bank or are they going to use it in the way that Paolo is describing or is it going to be a blend?

I think it's going to be both. And you know, it's funny because everyone when we start talking about rail efficiency in the US talks about how the rails here are about 95% efficient. And that's true, but it's relative, right? And so we still experience these pain points and they often come at very inopportune times for us. And so, you know, you can think about it's still very expensive to move money in the US, whether you're using Venmo or another money transfer service, especially from a card or via bank account, just in terms of a settlement perspective. I think that Americans will pick up on the idea and concept of stablecoin integration from a retail level, but you do that by packaging the products in ways that allows them to engage with stables without having to think about the fact that this is coming from the crypto ecosystem, right? And we're thinking about all different ways in which we can do this. You know, we've talked to payroll companies that front-run payroll for some of the big box retailers. I mean, you can think about folks that make minimum wage in this country. It's really hard to be paid on a bimonthly basis, right? And so with stables, the company they're working with to receive their payroll in terms of front-running it, they can pay it almost on a daily basis. And that's a huge unlock for folks, especially for folks that are engaged in remittances. And you can start packaging these products together if you want to automate a 10% remittance out of your daily paycheck, the family that lives overseas, you can do that. And I think that these are the kind of products that we're seeing to be developed. And, you know, the technology is just beginning in a sense of where it's going here in the US. And so, you know, we're talking to folks that do mortgage origination, giving people the optionality to actually put a down payment in stablecoins here in the US and pay it on a monthly basis in stablecoins, but I think it will be a blend ultimately. It's like kind of the merger of the retail space with traditional finance. Eventually, I envision a world in which you're going to have access to a stablecoin wallet through your banking UX. You can do a checking account swap and then send that money anywhere in the world instantly at any time at basically zero cost. And that's where we're going. But I also want to provide retail activity opportunity as well to consumers. And what I mean by that is being able to walk into a big box retailer and pay for a product in stables. It just makes life simpler and it also saves you a lot of money in terms of settlement. I think that even the card companies are now looking at stable integrations. You can think about the Visas or Mastercards of the world. It saves them a ton of money on the back end that they can pass on to the consumer in savings and still increase the revenue long term. So, you know, it's just about creating efficiency and in the US it might take a little bit more time just given the fact that folks do have access to different ways to move money. But that's not to say it's not going to convert. I mean, I strongly believe at the end of the day stablecoin adoption will be extremely widespread here domestically. And I think that it'll kind of blend this world of crypto into the traditional financial world in a way that's really positive and leads to tremendous success for both retailers, merchants, banks, and customers alike. It's going to be really exciting to see.