Tether CEO Bitcoin Conference Speech Transcript: We Are Not a Money Printer, We Are a Provider of Decentralized Infrastructure

Translator: Ethan, Odaily

The following is the full text of Paolo Ardoino's speech:

Supporting Bitcoin is truly an exciting thing. I really love it. Please pay more attention to it.

In today's speech, I want to start with this picture. This is one of my favorite images. It shows how I feel about Bitcoin: Bitcoin is like Wukong. I was born in the 1980s, and "Dragon Ball" is part of my childhood memories, and Bitcoin is that powerful companion. Tether, on the other hand, is like another friend on the journey—its power may not be as strong, but it is always reliable and important.

Tether started from scratch in 2014 and created the world's first stablecoin—USDT. We have been working hard to create products that people truly need. Just now, I updated a slide with data because this morning, our asset scale just surpassed 15.3 billion dollars. This was an unexpected development when we prepared the slides two days ago.

I want to talk about a moment that deeply moved me, which was the moment the pandemic occurred. Before that, Tether was mainly used as a medium for cryptocurrency trading. But since the pandemic began, it quickly transformed into a "digital dollar" used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide, becoming a part of their lives.

More importantly, since 2022, we haven't even had a formal marketing team. So I can't say this growth was achieved through "good operations" or "smart advertising." The fact is: when you create a product that people truly need, it will naturally grow and spread through word of mouth.

Some data you might be interested in: Last year we achieved a profit of 13 billion dollars. Currently, we hold over 120 billion dollars in U.S. Treasury bonds. In addition, we have also begun to invest heavily in Bitcoin. As a company, we now own over 100,000 Bitcoins.

We also hold about 50 tons of gold. Yes, I know many Bitcoin supporters don't like gold and even refuse to talk about it, as if gold threatens Bitcoin's position. But I don't think so. Bitcoin is perfect, while gold is imperfect; it does not compete with Bitcoin, it competes with fiat currency.

Personally, I think gold can almost be seen as the "primitive Bitcoin" in nature. And Bitcoin is our created "digital gold." We have about 420 million users in emerging markets and developing countries, accounting for 62% of decentralized trading volume. More meaningfully, about 35% of USDT users use it as a savings account—because they live in countries like Turkey, Argentina, and Vietnam, where their local currency depreciates rapidly, and they can only choose to save in dollars, with USDT being their most realistic option.

How do I view Tether? I believe it is a company that stands in stark contrast to traditional tech companies and financial institutions. Financial and big tech companies often rely on layers of intermediaries: financial intermediaries charge fees on every transaction, while tech giants control our data. Essentially, it is the same thing: we have lost sovereignty over both money and data.

Tether's goal is to provide tools through technology to help people break free from these intermediaries and achieve true individual sovereignty.

We are a company born out of Bitcoin. Everyone in the company loves Bitcoin. Our headquarters is located in the Bitcoin nation—El Salvador. This country has suffered from gang violence for 20 years, but now, under the courageous leadership of the president, it has transformed. Politicians can indeed make a difference, and we are seeing similar transformations in the U.S.: more and more politicians are beginning to understand the importance of Bitcoin for the country and the world.

One thing we are proud of is that we not only buy Bitcoin but also participate in mining ourselves. Yes, by the end of this year, we may become the largest Bitcoin mining company in the world—surpassing all publicly listed companies.

Many people will ask: You already hold so much Bitcoin, why still mine? The answer is: Bitcoin mining is our hedge against our own assets. We are not only holders of Bitcoin but also participants in network security. We use our computing power to protect the security of this network.

We are also promoting infrastructure development, such as launching WDK (Wallet Development Kit) to help every company, application, website, and AI Agent connect to non-custodial Bitcoin wallets. I don't believe future AI Agents should connect to custodial services via API; instead, they should have their own independent wallets, be endowed with assets, and perform tasks for humanity, rather than being constrained by the rules of a particular company.

Recently, we launched our own AI platform—KUBA, inspired by Asimov's 1956 short story "The Last Question." The question we want to answer is: "How to reverse the entropy of the universe?" This platform focuses on local reasoning and is compatible with any device: from a $30 Android phone in Africa to high-performance servers, all supported. The AI we hope to create is decentralized and serves society, rather than being a tool for extracting user data and profiting corporations.

We have also invested in the Plan B network and are its largest supporter. Although "Plan B" has a different meaning in the U.S. (laughs), we give it a new connotation: when Plan A fails, everyone should have their own Plan B—capable of monetary sovereignty and communication technology sovereignty.

We also collaborate with global universities through the Tether Education Program to promote Bitcoin education; invest in the BTC Pay Server open-source project to advance Bitcoin payment infrastructure; partner with the city of Lugano, Switzerland, to host the Plan B summit and sponsor local football clubs, bringing the Bitcoin brand to European stadiums; and we have teamed up with Fulgur to create a venture capital fund to invest in Bitcoin startups.

We partnered with the video platform Rumble and invested $775 million; they also have their own Bitcoin treasury. We will launch a Bitcoin-centric wallet product to make it easier for more people to get started.

In addition, we have developed a peer-to-peer communication application—Keet. It is currently still in the alpha testing phase but already supports peer-to-peer distribution of high-frequency voice, text, video, files, and more, all without a central server. We want to prove that "the cloud" is not our friend; it is merely an illusion imposed on us, a tool for extracting our data.

Finally, thank you all very much. I know I spoke for a bit long, but it is an immense honor to share these thoughts here in the U.S. with all of you. Together, we strive for the future of Bitcoin.

Thank you, everyone!