Paolo Ardoino (Tether) on stablecoin bills, pursuing an audit, and getting to 400m users (EP.606)
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Hello, and welcome back to On the Brink. I'm Nick Carter. Today, we're sitting down with Paolo Arduino, the CEO of Tether. This is actually his second episode on the show. I'd forgotten we interviewed him before. That was in June 2020, almost five years ago. That episode was called Managing the Growth of Tether. At that time, the supply of Tether was about $9,000,000,000 Today, it's $143,000,000,000 I think they've managed the growth okay. Obviously, it's such a pleasure to have Paolo on the show. He doesn't do that many public appearances. We cover a lot of terrain in this episode. Paolo has
you for having me, Nick. It's a big pleasure. So
there's so much to talk about. I don't even know where to start. Yesterday, Trump spoke at the digital asset digital asset summit or, I don't know, DAS in New York, and he said, quote, dollar backed stablecoins will help expand the dominance of the dollar for many years to come. It'll be at the top, and that's where we wanna keep it. It also came out yesterday. You tweeted, Tether was the seventh largest sovereign buyer of UST bills in 2024 with 33,000,000,000 in purchases. How are you feeling generally about where Tether is today in the political environment in DC? Alright.
There is a lot to unpack there. So, I want to point out yesterday, I think, was to my tweet was too short. But if you think if you take the image that they posted yesterday and you look at the first three, the top three were Cayman, Luxembourg, and then you had UK, I think, fifth or sixth. But Cayman and Luxembourg, they host a lot of hedge funds. So what when you see those numbers, you actually need to discount the fragmentation of the different hedge funds. So I believe that, actually, if you were looking at real numbers, Teta would be top three, buyer of, US treasuries in 02/2024. And on th
you know, we haven't seen you in The US much, before. I mean, I think it's it's a clear sign that you're showing up to Washington to make your case. Are you happy with what you've seen from these the bills that are making their way through congress? I know we have the house and the senate. They're a little bit different. They're changing. Are you generally happy with what you're seeing or what you wanna see from this legislation, assuming it passes?
So I think the the senate deal is, is quite interesting. I think it captures the importance of stable coins that operate internationally, that, you know, they are very much anyway under US scrutiny because and will remain under US scrutiny because, they would need based on this bill to, abide to, US law enforcement request and regulations. So, that I think is very important. We follow US laws and regulations when it comes to freezing. We've worked. We I think we are the only stable coin, including The US stable coins that onboarded, the FBI US secret services. We work the with the DOJ almost d
And now I believe the parent company is based on the BVI, and, I know that you obviously have affiliations worldwide, Switzerland, El Salvador. I wanna talk about that in a second. Is it your intent or desire to one day have some, operations in The US or even ultimately onshore the business into The US?
That's a very good question. So I think that, Tether International, the international stablecoin should remain international just because it makes, you know, does not, is, not, suited to be a competitor to PayPal, for example. But definitely given and we are going to watch the bill for, the requirements of the For US domestic stablecoins. And we would be open to create a domestic stablecoin in The US because we
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