Tether Signals Global Expansion as USDT Demand Accelerates

In Brief

• Tether is expanding beyond crypto into multiple global sectors.
• The move is driven by strong USDT demand and profits.
• Its growing influence is drawing scrutiny.

Flush with tens of billions in annual profits from its $185 billion stablecoin, Tether (USDT) is no longer content with being the cryptocurrency industry’s financial plumbing, rapidly expanding outside crypto.

Indeed, according to an FT report on February 8, Tether is planning a global move into areas including artificial intelligence (AI), energy, media, agriculture, and venture capital, raising an important question: what happens when the world’s largest stablecoin issuer becomes a global conglomerate?

How Tether Is Expanding Beyond USDT

Once run by a small, secretive group, Tether now oversees around 140 investments, ranging from a South American agricultural producer to a stake in Italian football club Juventus. Headcount has grown to roughly 300 employees, with plans to add another 150, mostly engineers.

At a recent conference in El Salvador, CEO Paolo Ardoino described Tether’s ambition to build a “freedom tech stack” spanning finance, intelligence, communications, and energy. He argued that decentralized, peer-to-peer tools are needed to counter Big Tech dominance, warning:

“If we build everything with centralized technology, freedom will fall.”

The irony, critics note, is that Tether remains the largest centralized actor in a $2.3 trillion crypto market.

*Total crypto market cap. Source: CoinGecko*

Why This Strategy Raises Questions

Observers are divided on whether Tether’s expansion reflects a coherent vision or ideology-driven empire-building. Austin Campbell of Zero Knowledge Consulting summed up the skepticism:

“How much of this is marketing and how much is held belief? (…) How do you square ‘the world is ending’ with ‘we’re reinventing tech, and everything is going to be great’?”

The company is also diversifying as competition intensifies. Rivals like Circle, now US-listed and headquartered in New York, are positioning themselves as more transparent and regulator-friendly.

Meanwhile, scrutiny hasn’t faded. US lawmakers and regulators continue to question Tether’s compliance practices, reserve composition, and limited cooperation with law enforcement. Though Tether publishes quarterly attestations, it still doesn’t provide a full audit, a lingering concern for critics.

Yet Tether’s profits give it room to manoeuvre. Its growing stockpile of US Treasuries, Bitcoin (BTC), gold, and land has turned it into a powerful bridge between traditional finance and crypto, and something resembling a “decentralized central bank,” as one insider put it.