Tether CEO on Bitcoin, Stablecoin Adoption, & More | Paolo Ardoino #1583

Paolo Ardoino is the CEO of Tether. In this conversation we talk about bitcoin, the recent stablecoin regulation, Tether’s US strategy, macro environment, financial breakdown of how much money Tether makes, UDST vs domestic stablecoins, investments in AI, gold, the brain computer interface that Tether is funding, and what the future could look like. ========================Markets are at all-time highs. Public equities are outperforming. And individual investors are driving it all. It’s officially the rise of the retail investor. On September 12th in NYC, I’m hosting the Independent Investor Summit — a one-day event built exclusively for self-directed investors. We’re bringing together some of the smartest public market investors I know for a full day of macro insights, market predictions, one-on-one fireside chats, and actionable investment ideas from each investor. This is going to be an absolute banger event. Join us if you like markets and think retail is two steps ahead of Wall Street. TICKETS: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.independentinvestor.co⁠⁠⁠⁠/ (use promo code POMPYT25)========================Xapo Bank, the world’s first fully licensed Bitcoin-enabled bank, offers military-grade security with an unmatched blend of physical and digital security, as well as pioneering regulatory oversight, so your funds are always protected. Beyond secure storage, they enable you to grow and use your Bitcoin. Earn daily interest in Bitcoin, spend with zero FX fees using a global card, and make instant payments via the Lightning Network for unrivalled access and convenience. Visit https://www.xapobank.com/pomp to join.========================Simple Mining makes Bitcoin mining simple and accessible for everyone. We offer a premium white glove hosting service, helping you maximize the profitability of Bitcoin mining. For more information on Simple Mining or to get started mining Bitcoin, visit https://www.simplemining.io/========================BitcoinIRA: Buy, sell, and swap 75+ cryptocurrencies in your retirement account. Take 3 minutes to open your account & get connected to a team of IRA specialists that will guide you through every step of the process. Go to https://bitcoinira.com/pomp/ to earn up to $500 in rewards.=======================Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/=======================View 10k+ open startup jobs:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

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• 0:02Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 0:58Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode.

• 1:26Speaker 03

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 1:50Anthony Pompliano?

  What's going on guys? Today we've got an amazing episode with Paulo Ardaño. He's the CEO of Tether and in this conversation, we went through it all. We talked about the recent stable Quinn regulation, the US strategy. Tether's coming to America and he explains exactly what they're going to do. We go through the macro environment, the financial breakdown of how much money Tether made in the first half of the year. We talk about The difference between USDT and the domestic stablecoin that they want to launch. And then we get into fun stuff like artificial intelligence and what Tether is doing on that front, including the investments they're making. We talk about gold and why that's such a big focus for them. And then we talk about the brain-computer interface that Tether is funding because of what they think that can mean for the future. This conversation goes very wide-ranging and it helps us better understand

• 2:32Anthony Pompliano?

  what Tether is doing, how much money they're making and where that money is going. Hope you enjoy my latest conversation with Paulo. All right, Paulo, I thought a great place to start this conversation is Tether is coming to the United States. Historically, you guys have done a fantastic job of going to emerging markets, getting, you know, 400-plus million people on-boarded to the US dollar and stablecoins. But now, when you come to the US, this is a whole new game. What is the plan for Tether in the United States?

• 2:56Speaker 04

  Well, first of all, something changed. That is the Genius Act that made it possible. So we're very thankful to the President and all the administration, as well as the lawmakers to make it possible. Look, first of all, Tether is the company that created the first stablecoin in 2014. It's 11 years in the works. We are grateful and honored that, you know, the most powerful country in the world is looking at the technology that we created 11 years ago and now is regulated on it. So that is something that we were hoping because for any industry to become mature, you need proper regulations.

• 3:38Speaker 04

  And interestingly enough, you know, the, this new, the Genius Act allows not only, of course, Tether to come and explore the United States, but to create an even playing field also for all the other financial institutions that now feel more confident that this is a technology, that is an opportunity that will stay, that will remain and will continue to grow. We have been advocating for such a long time how stablecoins and USDT in specific are the best allies for the United States. You know, in the latest station, we disclosed that we had more than $127 billion of the US Treasuries. That is more than South Korea.

• 4:22Speaker 04

  So we were able to pass South Korea, we passed Germany and then South Korea. And then I don't know what is the next one, but I'm pretty sure that maybe by the end of the year, we will pass another one, another nation. It's crazy to compare ourselves to nations, but it is what it is. And after that, on top of that, we have been bringing the US dollar to basically half a billion people in emerging markets. So, yes, we are looking at the United States. We want to open up shop in the United States for one of our new business lines. But we feel that we have been probably the best ally, one of the best allies of the United States all along. Sometimes it just, it took a little bit of time to make it clear, maybe.

• 5:07Speaker 04

  But it's without doubt, one of the best businesses out in the United States out there, when especially in the trenches, in emerging markets, developing countries where maybe the US presence is not that strong. But you see BRICS presence and, you know, big competitors of the United States very, very active in trying to de-dollarize the world. And that's, that's our plan. And now we can come to the United States and launch probably a domestic stable coin very soon.

• 5:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, let's explain to people in the emerging markets as kind of a lens to what could happen in the United States. I've seen a lot of pictures online over the last maybe six to nine months of people in South America or other geographies take a picture at a store and the store's prices for the goods they're selling are priced in USDT. So this whole idea of like, people are trying to drive adoption, not only as the individual users who want to pay for things or send money to their friends and family, but actually the store owners themselves are just using it as the pricing mechanism, which then incentivizes people to use USDT to purchase the goods. In the United States, we already price everything in dollars. We already use US dollars.

• 6:17Anthony Pompliano?

  And so really, if you have a dollar, the rails on which it is seems to be the big innovation here, right? You have a cheaper, faster, more efficient way to actually do this. There are some hours of operations, arbitrage with the traditional banks in terms of accessing your money versus USDT, et cetera. So how do you use the technology advantage you have, even though it is the same exact product that already has great adoption in the United States in terms of the dollar? Like, what is the actual plan? Do you go partner with the banks? Do you go after kind of a bottoms-up adoption strategy? Like, how do you attack this?

• 6:51Speaker 04

  So it's a very good point. You know, the way I try to describe the difference between the United States and the emerging markets, like big and emerging markets like Nigeria. I would say that in Nigeria, the quality of financial transmission rails is between 10% and 20%, right? In the United States, it's 90%. So almost the United States is almost perfection. So if in Nigeria, you put a stablecoin in Nigeria, you would improve that financial rails from 10%, 20% to 50%. So you get like a 30% gain. In the United States, you go from 90% to 95%.

• 7:31Speaker 04

  And so, of course, Tether always prefer to look at the emerging markets because that's where the majority of the gain would happen, could happen. Now, in the United States, you know, although there are less people that are underbanked, much less people than anywhere else probably, and maybe not Switzerland, but you know, almost anywhere else, and there is huge financial, there are almost perfect financial rails. The product has to be different, right? The product has to work in a different way. And so, yes, we are receiving, now that we announced that we are looking at the United States and we might, well, very probably launch a domestic stablecoin very, very soon,

• 8:15Speaker 04

  our aim is by the end of the year, we have enormous amount of financial institutions knocking our door, saying, oh, can we partner? Can we do something together? Can we build it together? And that is great because I think that with Tether's distribution channel, that we have both, or mainly the United States, if you will already, but especially outside the United States, we can offer to every single financial institution that will work with us within the United States, enormous access, unprecedented access outside the United States. That's the reason why these financial institutions are knocking our door.

• 8:55Anthony Pompliano?

  So distribution is a huge selling point. It's not just the financial rails of it being more efficient. What these banks are looking at, you know, one of my kind of frameworks for seeing why financial institutions, Wall Street, however you want to categorize them is leaning so heavily in is they now realize they can make money, right? There's new customers, there's new assets, there's new revenue, there's new profit that are going to come from this industry. It's coming from younger people and also these younger people have assets now. And so they see this as a very long-term kind of growth center for them. What you're essentially showing up is saying, look, I have better rails so I can do things cheaper and faster inside the United States. But also if you partner with me, I can bring you to half a billion people globally that right now your bank or financial institution doesn't even know exists, let alone has any connectivity or potential of working with them.

• 9:39Anthony Pompliano?

  And so it's kind of the one-two punch of, yeah, penetrate in the U.S., but also actually help really export the financial services of these banks or financial institutions into these emerging markets, using you guys as a distribution partner. That feels pretty powerful.

• 9:54Speaker 04

  That is, we are going, and exactly that, we are going to open up the world and new, huge new opportunities that we demonstrated were extremely valuable and are extremely valuable. Look, until probably a couple of months ago, people were like, oh, why are you working in the emerging markets rather than working in the United States? Well, look at our numbers. That is a good answer. Now, that is what we can bring to the table and that is the, you know, the reach we can bring to our partners.

• 10:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, what you've mentioned a couple of times in this conversation, a domestic stablecoin. When I think of USDT or any of the other stablecoin competitors, I think of them being something that is agnostic to geography. I can use them in the United States. If I lived in another geography, I could still access them with an internet connection and use them as I saw fit. What is the difference between the current version of USDT and what you're calling a domestic stablecoin?

• 10:54Speaker 04

  So I think that a domestic stablecoin would focus on, as I said, the very big difference between what is expected from, you know, a competitor also to all these fintech layers. You have like Zelle, PayPal, and Cash App and all that, right? So the US is in a very, very efficient techn- technological market. So we want to try a different offering. We want to redesign few things that will be perfected for the United States. So I think that the foreign stablecoin and like international stablecoin that is designed for the emerging markets not necessarily will work the best inside the United States.

• 11:39Speaker 04

  And look, in the end, think about it, you know, that is the Western that they had a lot. Well, you are, you have already one stablecoin, now you will have two. Well, we have also that are gold, so we have three, right? And so in a certain way, you will double the number of US dollar stablecoins that you have. Well, kind of yes, but keep in mind that there are, there will be hundreds of stablecoins in the US. So there will be plenty of new stablecoins. So the only thing that matters is the user experience to move from one to another. The, what will matter is the distribution. The rest doesn't matter. If you have one that is one across the world, or you have two or three that are basically specific to position, that doesn't matter.

• 12:24Speaker 04

  The only thing that matters is distribution and user experience, and that is what we believe are best at.

• 12:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, one of the things that's interesting to me is that Tether at different times has been popular on different blockchains. I think people a couple of years ago were very surprised to find that Tether's adoption on the Tron blockchain was very high because it was very cheap and people were using it across these emerging markets. I know at least one, maybe multiple projects that you all are either funding or backing and partnering with to create a stablecoin-specific Layer 1 blockchain to go and use this stuff. Can you talk about not just the stablecoin, but like this underlying infrastructure that these stablecoins are actually being used on in these blockchains? What do you think can be, you know, improved or innovated on at the blockchain level that could actually be better for stablecoins?

• 13:12Speaker 04

  So, look, I think that, you know, you, we have talked so many times now, so you know that I'm a Bitcoiner at heart and I, I'm not a big fan of the rest of, of the crypto space. Shocker, shocker. That is the headline. And, and so, the, the other thing that clearly is a weakness in terms of application of blockchain technology is stable coins. Now, I think that there is an opportunity to create blockchains that are settled and the gas fees are exactly in stable coins. So, because again, everything is user experience, like user experience is the biggest limiting factor today still to the usage of, of blockchain. Right?

• 13:56Speaker 04

  You have to buy your token and then you have to basically use a wallet that, so you have to load some Ethereum in the wallet and then you can, you can then send you SBT. But, and you can, it's a multi-step and for a person that does not know anything about blockchain is, is very problematic. Sure, you can do a, a structure, you can use many tricks, but it will never be as seamless as, you know, paying gas fees in, in, in a stable value, rather than having also fluctuating cost of, of, of fees based on basically just the price of Ethereum, for example. And so, that is a game changer in my opinion, the, the fact that we are seeing a huge opportunity also with commodity traders.

• 14:39Speaker 04

  Commodity traders wake, wake, and woke up and now they're all in into stable coins. They realize that the stable coins are going to improve efficiency and then the profitability of their portfolio and their balance sheet. So if a commodity trader has one billion in their portfolio, that, they will make more money if they can turn that billion around, ten times more. And with stable coins, that is not out of this world as a number, because you can start moving money in seconds rather than in hours or days or weeks.

• 15:17Speaker 04

  And that is so powerful. So even like commodity traders are very interested to not have to compete with dog coins with and or cat coins or something else, right? And all these tokens for blockchain space, they want to go where they can, they know that there is more like institutional usage and they can do use stable coins as a gas fee, but also they can also settle transactions among themselves, among their counterparties in a more institutional professional way. I think Genius App will bring that institutional level adoption and the blockchains that are going to solely focus on stable coins and settlement, interbanking settlement, intercompany settlement will have a huge advantage.

• 15:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, I want to talk about what you guys are doing with all this profit. Last year, you guys did $13 billion in net income. You've already posted a significant profit in the first half of 2025. I'm specifically interested in maybe three different things. There's artificial intelligence, there's a lot of stuff you guys are doing with gold, and then there's the brain-computer interface that you guys have been funding as well. But let's start with the artificial intelligence. This feels like a huge theme, not only in terms of you guys making investment in other people's companies, but you all have started to build artificial intelligence products as well. Give us an update on what's happening on that front.

• 16:29Speaker 04

  Well, that is one of the projects I'm more obsessed with. It's called Cuback. The name comes from the pattern of names that Isaac Asimov used, especially there is the short term, a short story called The Last Question, was written in 1956 by Isaac Asimov. And basically, it's a beautiful short story. It's like 14 pages. It includes the meaning of life, religion, philosophy, physics, and artificial intelligence. So I recommend everyone to read it. And the idea behind the behind Cuback is basically creating a

• 17:11Speaker 04

  platform that is a local first AI inference and fine tuning platform. That can work everywhere, anywhere. From like an embedded device to a $30 smartphone, to any flagship phones, every laptop, every server. We have a very unique and experienced team that is working on that. The idea is that data should stay with you and you should be able to run models locally on your smartphone or your laptop anywhere, but even on the smallest devices, right? The smallest devices could be brain-computer interfaces, but could be also even a light bulb, could be a car, could be a motorcycle,

• 17:55Speaker 04

  could be a drone, could be a robot, could be a spaceship, could be a planet. I don't know. But you should be able to scale infinitely. So from the smallest part of the ecosystem to the biggest component of the universe. So basically, AI will be in 20, 30, 50 years, embedded in 100 years or 10,000 years will be embedded in the fabric of the universe itself. And so it's unthinkable that AI will be remaining centralized forever. Even if you want to bring AI on Mars

• 18:37Speaker 04

  or you want to build or use LMS on Mars or on a spaceship, you don't have... The latency will suck if you have to connect to the Earth where you built your gigabit data center. So AI has to be able to be... Lean has to be able to be very precise and modular and local because latency matters. Latency between Earth and Mars is huge, and Mars is huge, so it will not work. And even if you are on planes, even if you are like... If you are in Africa, that latency will be terrible. And so we want to build something that adapts and grows and evolves with the technology that we are keep building. And humanity will keep building.

• 19:22Speaker 04

  So in the next five years, GPUs on mobile will be probably 10 times more powerful than what we have today because investments will be massive. And so already today, we can run... Very ton of models already locally on the phones, given the experience that we are gaining with Qback. And so imagine if we can do that today, in five years, it will be massive. And plus, we, given the peer-to-peer technology that we built with the whole punch, now we can also connect all these AI agents that work locally among themselves without any central servers, without any bottleneck, without any controllers. So we want to build the first,

• 20:01Speaker 04

  really decentralized, unstoppable AI platform. And one thing that I say from one Bitcoiner to another is that the thing that I don't like about using someone else's AI platform is that you become dumber, you don't become more intelligent, right? When I was a kid, I was like, my teacher was forcing me and forcing everyone to do calculations in mind, right? So you do additions, fractions, multiplication, divisions, and also more complex operations in my mind. And but with calculators, I saw even today, like people do very simple calculations on their calculator. And so imagine what calculators did to our ability to math in our brain. Imagine what AI

• 20:45Speaker 04

  platforms can do to our intelligence. And so at least, I think as Bitcoiners, we should think about something like, not your AI, not your intelligence, kind of thing. And so that's what we want to fix it better. The beauty of full thing is that there has their sources to make it happen, you know, given the profits that we had in the past years and we're going to likely keep having.

• 21:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, when we think about this kind of like locally run AI, one of the things that I always go back to is almost every on a weekly basis right now, there's some AI model that gets published that is the best one, right? And so we saw Grok four go and kind of leapfrog everyone. They kind of constantly keep improving. If you are using things on a local basis, how important is it to have the latest model versus, you know, maybe addressing some of the latency stuff? And obviously, you'd want to have both, right? You want to be able to run it locally, have access to the best AI. So just like, talk to some of the practicality of when you're in this kind of like innovation boom and things are moving so quickly, if somebody doesn't go and actually update, you know, to the latest model or update the software, how far behind can they get? And like, how do you start to fix some of that stuff?

• 21:57Speaker 04

  Well, really depends what you need to do. I think that, you know, we are very early on the AI growth. So in the next two, three years, there will be open source. And again, I always never think about today or next year. Because I think that for the next five years, centralized models will win. But I think in the next, within five years, the world will understand that either we create 100

• 22:23Speaker 04

  gigabyte data centers, that I think is very practical, and also will become a weapon and will become a target. And only works if the world remains stable, which I believe we all know that the world is going towards instability rather than stability. And so the reality is that we will keep improving. What is happening now with centralized data centers is just brute forcing AI. So we are trying to brute force intelligence. It's funny, because we are trying to, we want to mimic the brain trying to create this infinite and super power angry data centers when our brain basically consume like an energy as a potato.

• 23:06Speaker 04

  So, so it's in a certain way to me means that we have just the wrong algorithms. Like they're beautiful, they're great, but the, you know, the research didn't stop, right? It will never stop. We'll keep improving our research. We are going to keep doing better things. And then eventually we are going to achieve levels of efficiency on large language models that, or even just will change the technology entirely that we cannot comprehend today. And AI will help that that grow. So, yes, so I believe that in two, three years, for 90% of the jobs that we will assign to AI, local models, even slightly updated, updated local models will be perfect.

• 23:48Speaker 04

  And then for the rest 10%, you are going to get, you will try to use the bleeding edge models, the best ones and so on. But what I believe and envision is with Qvac is that everyone should be empowered to create a very efficient, small, local models. And through our peer-to-peer technology, we want to connect all of them without masters, without any central servers, so that you can have algorithms that will run queries across all these models and trying to get the best answer. It is a more collaborative approach across all like a zillion number of models, rather than having a huge monolithic wallet model. And a certain way is

• 24:28Speaker 04

  like, there is this book called The Cathedral and Bazaar, you know, Eric S. Raymond, that chose the difference between, explained the difference between having a monolithic approach, that is what is happening now between OpenAI and XAI and so on, versus having a bizarre model or bizarre approach to models where like you have really a billion models that are all interconnected and will create incentives to collaborate among themselves.

• 24:54Anthony Pompliano?

  How are you guys using artificial intelligence at Tether? Right? What we've seen now recursive learning, we've seen Meta throwing around billion-dollar job offers to AI engineers. They believe that the software will start learning from the software, the code will start writing code itself. Like, what are you guys seeing or implementing now? You're notorious, you're having a very lean team, very profitable on a per-employee basis. How are you guys using this new technology?

• 25:19Speaker 04

  So we have hired, I think, among the best in class in engineers. We are looking at building eventually our foundational models, but first we want to build a platform that can run any model and locally and remotely. Also, we, our, one of our main focuses to do local inference, that is very, very complicated on doing very efficient inference on, on mobile smartphone's hardware, for example. But also, we are engaging on federating inference through peer-to-peer federating inference, that is very unprecedented. So before starting

• 25:58Speaker 04

  Very complex financial models of ourselves. We want to build the groundwork that is in the end, as you said, every week there is a new model. And every week there is a new open source model. So sure, we could compete and create yet the one hundredth open source model every single week. But first, I think what we are missing is a platform that will able to run every one of them is like, you know, the the Sauron ring of the platforms that can run every single model and then

• 26:31Speaker 04

  scale to infinite number of nodes.

• 26:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, that's for building an actual model itself, but are you guys using Devin, which is kind of this AI software engineer or any sort of technology internally? Are people using like Claude to write code? Like, what about like the individual engineers that are humans today? What are they doing on a day to day basis to help actually build the tether product?

• 26:55Speaker 04

  So we are definitely using code assisted AI assisted coding. That definitely works. And also, first of all, we are testing all the different, both open and closed source models. And in the end, we are all going to open source all this stack, right? So we don't care. We want to make sure that we expedite our work because there is so much to do, so much to build that even thirty percent of gain is the same. So yeah, we are testing probably ten of these things and, you know, the we are pushing every developer in actually improving themselves to through AI assisted coding.

• 27:32Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, let's talk about gold. You guys have tether gold, but you've also started to do a lot of other things around gold as a product. I think there's folks who will hear this and be like, wait a minute, the Bitcoin guys, they're into the gold stuff. Explain what you guys are doing on the gold side and kind of what the thesis there is.

• 27:48Speaker 04

  Well, I think that there is, you know, I said it multiple times. There is nothing like Bitcoin, so Bitcoin is perfection. But I think the Bitcoiners mistake gold as a competitor to Bitcoin rather than a gold competitor to the dollar.

• 28:07Speaker 04

  Before 1971, gold was the backing of the dollar and all the other currencies and then stopped.

• 28:14Speaker 04

  Or paused, as they said at the time. And so, reality is that gold is your edge against fiat and Bitcoin is just perfection. Right? So sometimes, if you want, for example, if you're a trader, maybe instead of selling Bitcoin versus dollars, you could start thinking about selling Bitcoin versus gold. It's much, if you want to diversify from Bitcoin because you think you are like at the end of the cycle and maybe there is a crash and you want to just adjust your strategy to buy back Bitcoin at lower price, probably it's better if you buy, if you sell it against gold rather than Bitcoin.

• 28:51Speaker 04

  And, you know, also it's true that gold is the thing that has been used for the last 6,000 years as currency of RZ. If a financial RZ would happen in the next five years, for example, we are not sure yet if Bitcoin will be big enough, right? We know that gold is already, is huge, right? It's like 20 trillion dollars, so it has a bigger size. And so it's a matter of time, right? So, again, Bitcoiners should understand that, you know, they should look at the world with, and with, in, understanding basically that everything cannot happen tomorrow. Sometimes Bitcoiners, you know, complain about the fact that,

• 29:34Speaker 04

  you know, certain people in Africa didn't, are not using Bitcoin yet or enough. Because they don't understand that, you know, certain people, certain,

• 29:46Speaker 04

  certain villages, for example, or communities, they don't have the time yet to, that, that maybe a rich person in Manhattan can afford to, to learn about Bitcoin. Right? So.

• 30:00Speaker 04

  There is time for everything. And I think that when there is time, if things will have, if the world will go to hell in the next five years, there is good chances that part of the reset will happen in gold.

• 30:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, one of the things that Bitcoiners seem to be doing right now, they're not waiting, is these Bitcoin treasury companies. I know that you guys are part of 21, you SoftBank, Jack Mahlers, Cantor Fitzgerald. Rather than talk about that specific deal, because I know you guys are kind of going through the regulatory approvals to get that deal consummated, talk about maybe this trend in general. You've seen many people go and do this. Some of them are Bitcoin OGs, some of them are traditional finance folks. Obviously, Michael Saylor and Strategy have kind of pioneered this. You're now seeing geographic arbitrage, everything from the metaplanets of the world to, you know, David Bailey and his team running around, finding all these different markets.

• 30:53Anthony Pompliano?

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• 35:07Speaker 04

  So I think Bitcoin treasury companies are very interesting and I think if well done and properly carefully built, they have, they represent a huge opportunity. You know, there is this kind of dichotomy between Bitcoin treasury companies and ETFs, right? So there are still, in many situations, not all the funds can, or not all the companies can access ETFs. And so, you know, investing in a Bitcoin treasury company is definitely a different option, for example. And so I'm, I'm a little bit worried that will, but because there are very, very much a lot and

• 35:51Speaker 04

  in a certain of these companies and in a certain ways is good because, you know, they, they all contribute to buy Bitcoin. But I see some that might be a little bit too aggressive and a little bit too risky. You know, leverage is going to be very, very important. And, you know,

• 36:10Speaker 04

  I think that there is an, eventually some will end up in inflates.

• 36:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And is that because you think that they'll trade at a discount to NAV? Or you think that they'll just literally get so over levered that they'll have to liquidate? Or, you know, there will kind of be takeovers? Or like, what is that?

• 36:25Speaker 04

  The second.

• 36:25Anthony Pompliano?

  The second one is basically just like companies will actually blow up?

• 36:29Speaker 04

  There will be a consolidation, I believe, in the future. But it's like every happens in every industry, right?

• 36:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Talk about the brain-computer interface. I know this is one of your personal passions. You guys have been spending a lot of time and energy on this. What's the latest progress on building?

• 36:44Speaker 04

  So there is a, so the new technology that, so we invested in Blackrock Neurotech is a great company. They have, I think, the best brain-computer interface technology out there. They have, an upcoming version of their brain chip is just out of this world. They make, they made a probably 100x improvement on the chip. They're based in Utah, they're a very lean team, as we like. Very humble, but basically they are the pioneers of this entire industry and technology set.

• 37:25Speaker 04

  The aim there is to create, to make sure that the technology is pro-humans and remains pro-humans and will be used by people to improve themselves and also to create a hedge against the takeover of machines versus humans. You know, there is a very, you said it, right? So code will, AI will code itself, AI will improve itself. And if that really happens, which I believe will happen in the next five years, you know, there is this thing in technology called genetic algorithms. So it's like you, you know that, right? So imagine a genetic algorithm run by an AI

• 38:08Speaker 04

  that will be able to select the winners and do, and basically modify itself, improve itself like one billion times per day or hour or per minute. Our brain will not be able to comprehend that. So unfortunately, our brain is digital, but the way we express anything in our lives is very much analog, right? Our fingers are analog, you know, typing on a keyboard. Or our voice is very analog, right? So the way we communicate has been designed for an analog system rather than a digital system. And so... If we want, I think in the next 15 years, the comparison between a fish and a human today is between a human and a machine. And so we'll be, we'll be, it's kind of like that.

• 38:52Speaker 04

  And so we need to be able to make sure that the humans can communicate with the mathematical co-processor in their brain that will make, they will access to the digital portion of our cells. And we want to do that in the most, we want to make sure that doing so, all our thoughts, all our information will remain private, you know, as, you know, this is the Bitcoin way, way, way to do things. We want to make sure that, that's also why local LMS are very important. I think that, you know, the technology that we're building at Tether will allow the data of your brain be processed by your own device rather than in cloud by OpenAI, for example.

• 39:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's talk about the macro economy. Obviously, that has been a huge driver of Bitcoin. Bitcoin has done very well. We still haven't gotten the latest interest rate cuts, but I think people think that will happen, you know, coming here shortly. We also saw all these tariffs that got announced. They seem to not have had the kind of catastrophic impact on the economy that people had predicted. Seems like, you know, unemployment is still pretty healthy in the United States. GDP is growing very quickly. Inflation didn't show up, you know, in kind of a severe way that people thought it would. How do you think about the macro economy right now? And, you know, what's interesting is you guys are builders and investors. So building is kind of agnostic to the macro economy, but the investing, you may go faster

• 40:15Anthony Pompliano?

  or slower depending on what those economic conditions are. And so what's your current view on where we are from a macroeconomic standpoint? And are you guys doing anything differently as investors?

• 40:23Speaker 04

  Well, first of all, we are, as I mentioned before, we're investing in gold, but also we have been investing in land and agriculture. I think it's That is just to remind everyone is outside of the reserves of the stablecoin, so it's done with the profits. And so we have been, we're investing very cutting-edge technology like AI, brain-computer interfaces, but a good portion of the portfolio is investing in Bitcoin, in gold, and land and agriculture. Like, those things are the things that will remain, whatever happens. And I agree, the United States are now in a very strong position, right? Look at the deal that they got with Europe.

• 41:04Speaker 04

  And, you know, as an European, I cannot, I can only laugh, because otherwise I would cry. And, you know, it's, I think it tells a lot about the discrepancy that will, that is worsening across, you know, all the different countries, right? So all the countries, before, in the last 25 years, everyone was talking about globalization. I think that is very much that, everything will go to localization. Every single country will look out for it, for themselves, rather than, you know, thinking about others. That will just increase. And so that will create a schisma, that will create definitely much more friction, and

• 41:49Speaker 04

  also will accelerate for the poorer countries, potentially, you know, their even more issues on their, you know, national currencies, and weakening of their economies. And so that's something that we, you know, at Tether, we are very much aware of. We are trying to build technology that at least will bring additional opportunities to the people living also in the less fortunate countries, right? So the point of USDT is bringing the dollar to the people that are living in countries where their central banks are taking very bad decisions.

• 42:27Speaker 04

  And so we are trying at least to give an option, a plan B to the people. Same happens with technology, with AI technology, with telecommunications technology that we're building. And so from the macro side, I mean, I'm, you know, I, I agree that, you know, the, um, the tariffs where, you know, there was the, people were screaming and, and, um, and basically projecting the, the failure of the United States in just a couple of years. Um, definitely tariffs are, are working very well for the United States, but everything is so is a zero sum game, right? If they work very well for the United States, might not work very well for other countries. And we are leaving the same work, so that, that might have, you know, side effects that

• 43:12Speaker 04

  are very hard to grasp and predict. And in my opinion, there is more likelihood that things will go wrong elsewhere.

• 43:19Anthony Pompliano?

  One of the things that's interesting to me about this like macro backdrop that we're operating in is on the geopolitical front, it does feel like there's some fracturing or some isolation. You know, the United States is saying, hey, look, we want an even playing field and so we're going to put up these tariffs. We're going to really drive the reshoring of manufacturing and making investments here in America. At the same time that what feels like that fragmentation, we are seeing in a finance world where you all are bringing the US dollar globally. You're actually bringing more people, you know, kind of together in the US dollar. There's a ton of financial firms that are really excited about tokenizing public equities or, you know, other assets that in their mind will open up access to what has historically

• 44:01Anthony Pompliano?

  been kind of US centric, you know, markets and assets. And so it does feel like even though the geopolitical, you know, kind of fragmentation is occurring, in a weird way, the financial assets are becoming more global and the borders are disappearing more, right?

• 44:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, certainly for the specific US dollar, again,

• 44:23Speaker 04

  it's US dollar things that will become more global and but the other countries are very like very much lagging behind. Think about Europe again. Europe had probably Europe tried to do a digital asset law much before the United States and they, you know, the result definitely is not great. And for the stable coins, I've been very vocal about, you know, they had the opportunity to have hundreds of millions of people participating outside in the Europe, participating to their European economy, buying European stocks, buying European debt, because technically if you buy European stablecoin, you would buy then European debt, as exactly as USDT is helping the United States in that sense. But unfortunately, not every single country has been understanding the

• 45:08Speaker 04

  technology and the opportunity and potential. Look at what is happening in UK, right? So where like now to to go on any website, you know, even Spotify was reading and you have to K O C and then so just to verify your age. I can see and I'm sure you can see how that can go very, very wrong and very soon.

• 45:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, you know, what's funny is when I'm in the United States, you can kind of go through different websites. Every once in a while, you could hit with a pop up where, you know, maybe you've got to sign into something or agree to something. If you go in Europe, the joke for Americans is like, it takes you five minutes to get through all the pop ups and the GDPRs and the, you know, agree to this, agree to that, deny this, whatever. And then you get to get to the website. And so it does feel like there is, even though the United States, we still complain about regulations and, you know, data controls and all these things, Europe just took it to the extreme. And so, you know, I come back to this idea, and I think you guys are like a perfect example, right? Most innovation, both in the United States and internationally, is driven

• 46:10Anthony Pompliano?

  by risk takers. And the definition of risk taker is taking risk, like doing things that may or may not work, that requires investment, that requires trying new things, pushing the pace of what is potentially possible.

• 46:25Anthony Pompliano?

  There are certain cultures like the United States, which even though we have lots to improve on, seem to be very encouraging of that risk-taking. The capitalistic system, the ability to fund this stuff, you know, obviously venture capital, etc. Europe and maybe some other places in the world feel like they have essentially disincentivized risk-taking. And to me, like, that is the story of why you get different results in these different geographies is like, are the politicians, are the people creating the rules and the kind of conditions trying to encourage risk-taking or trying to disincentivize it? And the people kind of follow the incentive system, right? Like, if you're in a place where they don't want you to take risk, and you're a risk-taker, you go somewhere where they're encouraging you to take risk. And so, in a weird

• 47:09Anthony Pompliano?

  way, like, you guys are unique in that you actually stayed in a place where there wasn't as much risk-taking, and you have succeeded by taking an immense amount of risk early on, and being very smart about not getting complacent, and kind of continuing to push the pace of innovation, it looks like.

• 47:25Speaker 04

  Well, if you build an industry, for every new industry, you have to build something that does not have roads yet, right? So, you have to do it in the safest way possible. You have to be working and trying to explain what the hell you're doing. But, yeah, I mean, with, at the beginning, cars didn't have roads, and then there was no low code for driving a car. And then it happened, right? So, every single innovation and invention is the same. There is this paper, like, newspaper from the 18th century that had all the, you know, was trying

• 48:08Speaker 04

  to push against the proliferation of electricity in the cities, and was showing people hanging the cities through these cable, electric cables, right? So, you know, the EU will always have this thing, and, you know, imagine when you touch finance, even more so, right? So, it upsets many people. It upsets many people. But, you know, it's fine. I mean, in a certain way, I feel like a little bit Forrest Gump, right? So, we dodged the bullets, and we kept running, and now we're here.

• 48:37Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. This is the hardest question I've ever asked you. You're a good-looking guy who's successful, who's built this amazing company. What problems do you have? What are the biggest obstacles that you face? The one thing you've ever told me is, uh, sometimes you don't get a lot of sleep because you got, you know, so many different things going on. People are constantly messaging you, problems, etc. But what are the other big obstacles, whether for you personally or for, you know, kind of Tether more broadly? I think people are very drawn to the story of success, but it's important to remind them that there are, you know, many obstacles that you guys still face and you're trying to figure out. So like, how do you identify maybe what the biggest things that, that are the challenges right now for you?

• 49:16Speaker 04

  Well, my personal challenge is that they have only 24 hours in a day. And that is, uh, it's a very annoying challenge because, uh, you know, I, I have very, a lot of ideas and I need to, to either clone myself or, or, you know, having a Paolo's AI, um, a local AI that, that will help me. Uh, but, um, yeah, I think the, you know, one of the things that, um, I think is not challenging, but, um, I think a lot about when in Tether is that Tether was born with, uh, with a mission of bringing, uh, financial inclusion and bringing, you know, uh,

• 49:53Speaker 04

  you know, improve, uh, in a certain way, society in, in, in, in certain aspects, like with the, you know, again, financial freedom, access to, you know, more free access to, to wealth and all that. And we are trying to do that in multiple other areas now. What we learn about in, in, in, um, in finance with you as a team and cutting intermediaries, we want to do it with, uh, tech, with, uh, with whole bunch of kit and, and all this AI platform and all that. So, so first of all, the, the biggest challenge is, you know, we have so much to do. And so we, we have, I think the mission is so big. We are, I've defined ourselves in, is this once in a century company where we have the opportunity with our profits,

• 50:36Speaker 04

  immense amount of profits that, you know, we could do is use in two ways. One way that is not us, right? So companies would distribute all the money to the shareholders so they can buy a bigger yacht. You know, that is not us. We won't use these profits to keep reinventing ourselves and build something even crazier and more innovative and in all the possible other fields. So that is the biggest challenge, right? So how we can keep reinventing and keep innovating on other fields and bringing the same passion and the same ethos and philosophy that we had elsewhere. And the second one is kind of weird in a certain way. I think that, you know, I remember when a certain company, the first motto was don't be evil. And then kind of to me, they turned evil,

• 51:21Speaker 04

  or they betrayed the initial philosophy. And so how I can protect, you know, when I build technology, how I can protect the users of that technology from even myself, right? So how we can make sure that we don't turn evil, or we don't have any sense of turn evil is going to be very important. So that I think about that a lot.

• 51:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, it's pretty inspiring. You know, when you're creating 13 plus billion dollars of profit a year and you say, hey, we want to use this to continue to fund innovation and push the pace of what's possible, you know, when it's inspiring to people, but also two is you're going to win some, you're going to lose some, but the winners really, really are going to have a profound impact on individuals and society because you guys can take risks that maybe others can't, since you're funding it, right? I think one of the things that people forget is so many innovations don't come to fruition for a long time because you not only need the entrepreneur and the team to build it, you need someone to believe as the capital provider. But when you're able to hand the capital to the people who actually have the ideas and can build, like in this case,

• 52:27Anthony Pompliano?

  certain things get funded that maybe otherwise wouldn't. And therefore you can really push, you know, kind of what's possible, which I think is so exciting about what you guys are doing.

• 52:36Speaker 04

  Exactly that. Exactly. That well said.

• 52:38Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, my friend. Where can we send people to find the tether at a station? I think that's probably the most interesting place to send people who are kind of more interested from an investment and business perspective. Where can they go to see that?

• 52:51Speaker 04

  Go on teter.to and then in the header you will find the transparency page and then you will find the station. We just released that yesterday, was very good one, good profits. And we grew 13.4 billion in terms of USDT market cap in the last quarter, 20 billion from the beginning of the year. We put 100 billion dollars between us and our main competitor. That is a huge testament of trust in our product. You know, I'm very, very bullish also for the rest of the year.

• 53:34Anthony Pompliano?

  I keep telling you, 200 billion USDT market caps incoming, so keep up the great work and we will do this again soon.

• 53:43Speaker 04

  Thanks, Paul.