The USDT version for the United States is coming? Tether CEO explains the company's strategy.

The CEO of Tether explained the company's strategy: US stablecoins, AI, gold, brain-computer interfaces, etc. (Summary: Tether released Q2 earnings: USDT market value hit a new high, holding 127 billion US dollars, quarterly net profit of 4.9 billion US dollars) (Background supplement: Tether announces gold token XAUt reserves: 7.66 tons of gold bars safely lie safely in Swiss vaults) This week, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino and American entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Professional Capital Management, Anthony Pomplian had an in-depth conversation about Tether's strategy to enter the U.S. market, the planned Tether U.S. stablecoin, and areas such as AI, gold, and brain-computer interfaces. Paolo Ardoino also sounded 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 drove Tether to explore the U.S. market and created a level playing field for all other financial institutions. Tether holds more than $127 billion in U.S. Treasuries, recently surpassed South Korea as the 18th largest holder of U.S. Treasuries, and is expected to overtake another country by the end of the year, albeit crazy compared to the country, but that's the truth. We are probably 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, leveraging Tether's global distribution network to reach new customers and revenue streams. For example, in Nigeria, the efficiency of gold financial infrastructure is between 10% and 20%, while in the United States the figure is 90%, which is almost perfect. Therefore, if in Nigeria the quality of the financial transmission track can be increased to 50%, but in the United States only from 90% to 95%. Because U.S. banks are underserved by relatively few people, Tether's products for the U.S. market must be unique. What is the difference between USDT and Tether US native stablecoins? Paolo Ardoino: USDT mainly serves emerging markets (such as Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia), helping local users bypass inefficient financial infrastructure, more like an international stablecoin. However, USDT may not work best in the US market. U.S. domestic stablecoins are designed for the U.S. market, optimizing the user experience to adapt to the mature U.S. financial system (e.g., partnering with banks, improving payment efficiency). In the future, hundreds of stablecoins may emerge in the US market, and the experience of users migrating from one stablecoin to another will be key, and user experience and distribution capabilities are the advantages of Tether. In what ways can stablecoin infrastructure / blockchain be improved or innovated? Paolo Ardoino: The user experience is the biggest limitation, you need to have a wallet, there must be enough gas fees in the wallet to transfer stablecoins, of course, you can do account abstraction or through other means, but you still can't pay gas fees seamlessly at a stable value, but you need to pay using volatile assets (such as ETH). 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. Blockchains that focus on stablecoins and settlements, interbank settlements, and intercompany settlements will have huge advantages. Tether+AI Paolo Ardoino: QVAC is one of my more obsessive projects, and the idea behind it is to build a native AI reasoning 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 and unstoppable AI platform. We're trying to mimic the brain, trying to build infinite, super-powerful data centers. QVAC will allow everyone to build small, efficient local models and connect all of them without a master server, without any central server, through peer-to-peer technology, so you can execute queries and get the best answers across those models. Tether will eventually build its own base model, but first build a platform that can execute any model, local and remote. Local inference is also one of the main focuses, and we are also working on peer-to-peer joint inference. What do you think of gold and Bitcoin? Paolo Ardoino: I've said many times that there's nothing better than Bitcoin. Bitcoin is perfect. Bitcoin holders mistakenly believe that gold is a competitor to Bitcoin, but this is not the case. If investors believe that Bitcoin is at a market cycle high and want to exit it temporarily, it makes more sense to exchange Bitcoin for gold than for US dollars, which better retains purchasing power (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) in the next 5 years, gold's $20 trillion market capitalization (well beyond Bitcoin's current size) could make it a more acceptable transitional asset for traditional markets, and Bitcoin will need time to expand. What do you think of Bitcoin treasury companies? Paolo Ardoino affirmed the market role of bitcoin treasury companies, but also expressed concern about some aggressive strategies, such as overleverage. Eventually, the industry will undergo reshuffling and consolidation. 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 100 times more performance. Blackrock Neurotech is headquartered in Utah and has a very lean team. Blackrock Neurotech is committed to ensuring that brain-computer interface technology benefits and works for humanity, while preventing robots from replacing humans. What do you think of the current macroeconomy view? Paolo Ardoino: The United States is in a very strong position right now and is bullish on the globalization trend of dollar stablecoins. The United States has achieved its own interests through tariff policy, and although this may have a negative impact on other countries, the short-term boost to the US economy is significant. Europe got off to an early but ineffective start in digital asset regulation, failing to seize technological opportunities to expand the euro's global reach. Poor countries experience currency depreciation and rising economic vulnerabilities, 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 land and agriculture、...