Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether at Token 2024 Dubai 2024

I'm great, thank you for having me.

Yes, exactly. First time, but I think it's already a beautiful event, although it started a bit wet.

No, I think I was lucky in the end to be able to arrive at the hotel healthy and safe.

I think that Dubai is setting itself up for being one of the most important places for crypto in the world. I traveled a lot. I was recently in Paris, I visited Amsterdam, and really many all the countries in Europe. I think that with the most advanced regulations that Dubai is setting up, it's raising the bar for everyone. It's a beautiful city full of options. I think a lot of crypto people are here, so it's easier to meet anyone in the crypto industry. It feels like you walk around the city and there's someone asking you for something about crypto or what is your predicted Bitcoin price. But more seriously, I think it's important for other countries to look at what Dubai is doing, because Dubai is a place that decided to embrace crypto in a positive way, to bet on this new technology, on the positive change that it can bring to society, rather than trying to regulate down and protect the banking industry. We all know that progress needs to be regulated, it's important that there is safe progress, but it should be done and will need to happen, will happen eventually. So regulators should try to understand as much as possible this industry, because it will happen, and it's best that they are up to date.

Yeah, so I clearly stated that also in Paris, I clearly stated something that shocked people. I said stablecoins are not used in Europe and the United States. No one is using them there. In Europe and the US, you have the best banking rails, you have credit cards, debit cards, people can take debt out of debit cards. There is $1 trillion in debt in the US on credit cards and debit cards. I'm American, so I know this very well, I'm part of that group. But you don't take debt on a stablecoin, it's not like your crypto wallet can go below zero. So the US and Europe don't need stablecoins, they are not using stablecoins, not only Tether, no stablecoin. So who needs that? When you create a product, the only thing that is important is understanding your audience. You have to, if you create a spoon, it's important that you understand your audience for a spoon as well. So USDT is heavily used in Central and South America. You go to Argentina and Buenos Aires, everyone accepts USDT there. From the hairdresser to the barber shop, groceries, you go to the Mercado Central in Buenos Aires, you can buy meat, fish, whatever, all in USDT. The reason is that the Argentine peso lost 98% against the US dollar in the last five years. Same thing happens in Turkey, in many African countries as you mentioned, in Asia. So all the emerging markets, developing countries are our markets. Also, for example, Brazil and Argentina independently, their ministers of economy issued their market research showing that USDT has a market share of more than 80% of all digital asset transactions. That was up to 2023. I think this year could be even higher, even the growth of USDT.

Well, it's funny because you cannot have two stablecoins that are 80% of the market share. If you have a government that says USDT is 80% of the market share, what can you say about what is being claimed by the other side? But nevertheless, our competition is looking at a different strategy that in my opinion is not interesting to us. That is trying to work to replace the settlement layer for banks. Banks don't need stablecoins, they don't like stablecoins, they are fearful of stablecoins. The people that need stablecoins are the people in emerging markets.

I think the stablecoin industry showed the importance of disintermediation and the importance of being able to give a checking account to every single person in the world. With USDT, no matter where you are, if you are in an emerging market, you are part of the unbanked crowd. You know that in certain countries, there are even 70% of the population that don't have a bank account, not because they are bad people, just because they are too poor to be of interest to the banking industry. If your salary is $100, $200, $300 per month, you don't have big savings and the bank can make too little money on your account, so they will not bank you. That is a common story of all the countries that we work in. That's why Tether's market cap is growing, because we understand the needs of people, and we are going to keep doing that throughout 2024 and 2025 and forever.

I feel myself extremely lucky because I started in Bitcoin in 2013, and I'm still a Bitcoiner at heart. What I like about what Tether is doing is that people know USDT, but actually Tether is much bigger than a stablecoin. With our own profits that are becoming quite important nowadays, we invested in renewable energy production, Bitcoin mining to help the decentralization of Bitcoin mining, peer-to-peer communication tools to disintermediate communication. See the pattern? We reinvest our profits. We don't have to buy yachts for ourselves, we don't do that stuff. We are simple people, we just care about keep doing what we have been doing for the last 10 years: disintermediation, helping people, helping our community, and giving back to all the other industries that are complementary to the financial industry.

I'd like to see less coins with a dog face on it and more real world assets, more use cases. The issue with our industry is that there's no loyalty and stickiness. Whatever project offers a bit more incentives, people turn there. But if you build, if you help people, if you help populations, if you help communities, you build infrastructure for them, there is loyalty because you are solving life problems.

That was a question I didn't expect. I would say the moment I was told I could become the CTO of Tether. That's an accomplishment.

Thank you very much for having me.