Is USDT coming to the United States? Tether CEO explains the company's strategy in detail

Rounded by: KarenZ, Foresight News

This week, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino had an in-depth conversation with American entrepreneur and founder and CEO of Professional Capital Management, Anthony Pomplian, about Tether's strategy to enter the U.S. market and the planned launch of Tether U.S. stablecoins and AI, gold, and brain-computer interfaces were discussed. Paolo Ardoino also issued a warning against overleveraged Bitcoin treasury companies.

The author has refined and sorted out this:

What are Tether's plans in the United States?

Paolo Ardoino: The recently passed Genius Act has driven Tether to explore the U.S. market and has also leveled the playing field for all other financial institutions. Tether holds more than $127 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds, recently surpassing South Korea to become the 18th largest holder of U.S. Treasury bonds, and is expected to surpass another country by the end of the year, although it is very crazy compared to the country, but this is the truth. We may be one of America's best allies. Tether plans to launch a homegrown stablecoin in the United States. U.S. banks and financial institutions will also partner with Tether to leverage Tether's global distribution network to expand new customers and revenue streams.

For example, in Nigeria, the efficiency of financial infrastructure is between 10% and 20%, while in the United States this figure is 90%, which is almost perfect. Therefore, if the quality of the financial transmission track in Nigeria can be improved to 50%, but only from 90% to 95% in the United States. With the relatively small number of people underserved by U.S. banks, Tether's offerings for the U.S. market must be unique.

What is the difference between USDT and Tether native US stablecoins?

Paolo Ardoino: USDT mainly serves emerging markets (such as Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia), helping local users bypass inefficient financial infrastructure, and is more like an international stablecoin. But USDT may not work best in the US market.

U.S. stablecoins are designed specifically for the U.S. market, optimizing user experience to adapt to the mature U.S. financial system (e.g., cooperating with banks to improve payment efficiency).

In the future, hundreds of stablecoins may emerge in the U.S. market, and the experience of users migrating from one stablecoin to another will be key, and user experience and distribution capabilities are where Tether's strengths lie.

What can be improved or innovated in stablecoin infrastructure / blockchain?

Paolo Ardoino: User experience is the biggest limitation, you need to have a wallet, and the wallet must have enough gas fees from the network to send stablecoins. This part needs to be improved.

Commodity traders are all in stablecoins, realizing that stablecoins can boost the profitability of portfolio efficiency. The Genius Act will lead to institutional-level adoption. Those that focus on stablecoins and settlements, interbank settlements, and inter-company settlements will have huge advantages.

Tether+AI

Paolo Ardoino: QVAC is one of my more obsessive projects, and the idea behind it is to create a native AI inference and fine-tuning platform that can work anywhere, from embedded devices to smartphones, laptops, or servers. The smallest devices can be brain-computer interfaces, cars, drones, robots, or they can be taken to space, planets.

Therefore, AI must be lean, precise, modular, and localized. AI will be embedded in the fabric of the universe itself in 20, 30, 100, or 10,000 years. In the next five years, mobile GPUs could be 10 times more powerful than they are today. We want to build the first truly decentralized, unstoppable AI platform.

We are trying to mimic the brain and try to create infinite, super-powerful data centers. QVAC will allow everyone to create efficient small, on-premises models and connect all of them without a primary server and without any central server through peer-to-peer technology, so you can run queries across those models and get the best answers.

Tether will eventually build its own foundation model, but first build a platform that can run any model, both locally and remotely. Local reasoning is also one of the main focuses, and we are also working on point-to-point joint reasoning.

What do you think of gold and Bitcoin?

Paolo Ardoino: I've said many times that there is nothing better than Bitcoin. Bitcoin is perfect. Bitcoin holders mistakenly believe that gold is a competitor to Bitcoin, but in reality it is not. If investors believe Bitcoin is at a market cycle high and want to exit temporarily, it makes more sense to exchange Bitcoin for gold than for USD, as gold retains its purchasing power better (the US dollar can be eroded by inflation). In the event of a global financial reset (such as the collapse of the fiat currency system) within the next five years, gold's $20 trillion market capitalization (far exceeding Bitcoin's current size) could make it a more transitional asset accepted by traditional markets, and Bitcoin will take time to expand its size.

What do you think of Bitcoin Treasury Corporation?

Paolo Ardoino affirmed the market role of Bitcoin treasury companies, but also expressed concerns about some aggressive strategies (such as overleveraging). Eventually, the industry will undergo reshuffle and integration.

Tether+ brain-computer interface

Paolo Ardoino: At the end of April 2024, Tether invested $200 million in Blackrock Neurotech. Blackrock Neurotech has the best brain-computer interface technology, with a new generation of chip technology with 100x performance improvement. Blackrock Neurotech is based in Utah and has a very lean team.

Blackrock Neurotech is committed to ensuring that brain-computer interface technology benefits and is used by humans while preventing robots from replacing humans.

What is your view on the current macroeconomy?

Paolo Ardoino: The United States is now in a very strong position and is optimistic about the globalization trend of US dollar stablecoins. The United States has realized its own interests through tariff policy, which may have a negative impact on other countries, but has a significant effect on the US economy in the short term. Europe started early but ineffectively in digital asset regulation, failing to seize technological opportunities to expand the euro's global influence. Currency depreciation and economic vulnerability in poor countries will increase, and tools such as USDT provide "Plan B" for people in these regions, mitigating the impact of local currency fluctuations. Tether is not only investing in gold, but also in fields such as land and agriculture, AI, and brain-computer interfaces.