During the global Bitcoin conference at the end of May, Paolo Ardoino, the CEO of Tether, the largest issuer of the global stablecoin USDT, was interviewed by CNBC.
In a speech at the Bitcoin conference, Paolo Ardoino stated that there are approximately 420 million USDT users in emerging markets and developing countries, accounting for 62% of decentralized trading volume. "More significantly, about 35% of USDT users treat it as a savings account—because they live in countries like Turkey, Argentina, and Vietnam, where local currencies have depreciated severely, and their only option is to save in US dollars, with USDT being their most practical choice."
According to Coingecko's data on June 18, the overall market value of USDT is approximately $155 billion, with a trading volume of about $27.7 billion in the past 24 hours, making it the largest stablecoin issuer in the world; the recently listed "first stablecoin stock" Circle (CRCL.US) has an overall market value of approximately $61.5 billion, with a trading volume of about $9.2 billion in the past 24 hours.
However, market analysts believe that under the framework of the "Genius Act" (i.e., the "Guiding and Establishing the National Innovation Act for Stablecoins in the United States", which was passed by the U.S. Senate on June 17 and is awaiting review by the House of Representatives), Tether's compliance level is lower than that of Circle, which is one of the reasons why Circle went public before Tether. Paolo Ardoino also responded to questions about "offshore structures" and audits in an interview, stating that they have had good communication with the Big Four accounting firms, but he also mentioned that "this will be a long journey."
It is worth mentioning that Paolo Ardoino specifically shared the logic behind Tether's investments in agriculture, dairy, as well as technology companies such as video platforms and brain-computer interfaces.
According to Tether's official website, Tether announced the acquisition of the Latin American agricultural company Adecoagro on April 30 of this year. Adecoagro's main business includes the production of sugar, ethanol, dairy products, and crops in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. The company owns 210,400 hectares of farmland and several industrial facilities in these countries.
In this regard, Paolo Ardoino stated in an interview, "We are still exploring how to show agricultural businesses and commodity producers (such as wheat, rice, milk, etc.) how to use stablecoins for international trade. For example, Adecoagro sells products to Asia and the United States, and to make these sales more efficient, they have started considering using stablecoins to complete transactions."
Tether's latest announced investment is its acquisition of a 31.9% stake in the Canadian gold royalty company Elemental Altus Royalties, which was announced on June 12. Tether stated that this investment is aimed at "integrating long-term stable assets like gold and Bitcoin into its ecosystem," serving both as a hedge and as part of its commitment to building a resilient digital economic infrastructure.
The following is the transcript of the interview compiled by "Mingliang Company" (with edits):
Host: Tether is one of the companies with the highest profit per employee in the world. Before we delve into the stablecoin strategy and some of the work you are doing, I am interested in some of your recent investments, including the investment in a dairy company in Brazil. So please talk about your investments in artificial intelligence and neuroscience, as well as the reasons you are optimistic about dairy products and milk in the long term.
Paolo: First of all, thank you for your invitation. From the outside, people might think we are doing some random things, but that's not the case.
Host: When you have a large amount of capital, you must invest wisely, which is also why I want to know what you do.
Paolo: Over the past two and a half years, we have generated twenty million dollars in profit. You must think and develop a very precise investment plan. We receive almost a hundred investment projects every day, so we have to be very selective. Part of our investments—just to clarify, these are investments outside of stablecoin reserves—includes a portion of long-term safe investments such as land and agriculture. Tether is known for creating and owning the largest stablecoin in the world, and the USDT stablecoin is a tool that brings stability to people, communities, and nations. We bring stability to countries where the local currency is extremely fragile, such as the Argentine peso or the Turkish lira, so stability is at our core. And for the long-term stability of humanity, nothing is more stable and necessary than land and agriculture.
The reason we are investing in Adecoagro – a publicly traded company and the largest single landowner in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil – is that we want our portfolio to have exposure to "real Bitcoin" – land, because land is scarce and you cannot create more land. Of course, you could say to go to Mars to create more land, but in reality, humanity will always need land, and we need agriculture, good agriculture, to survive and develop. This is why we are allocating part of our portfolio to land businesses. Additionally, we are exploring how to show agricultural companies and commodity producers (such as wheat, rice, milk, etc.) how to use stablecoins for international trade. For example, Adecoagro sells its products to Asia and the United States, and to make these sales more efficient, they are starting to consider using stablecoins to complete transactions. This is a very attractive way, as we believe commodity trading companies will become the biggest drivers of stablecoin adoption in the next five years.
Of course, we have more new types of investments in new technologies, such as artificial intelligence or biotechnology. I love these areas because I'm a geek by nature, so we invested in NorthernData. We are the majority shareholder of NorthernData, perhaps the world's largest independent AI infrastructure provider. By independent, I mean that it is not Google, not Microsoft, not Amazon. They have 24,000 GPUs, and we plan to use these resources at Tether to build our own AI models in the future. We are building our own AI platform at Tether. We've also invested in biotech and neurotech, especially one of my favorite companies, BlackrockNeurotech., which can be said to be a competitor to Neuralink, which is actually a competitor to them. We're creating the world's most advanced brain-computer interface that can read 90 words per minute from the human brain, which is almost close to the speed at which a normal person speaks, if you think about word speed. I think this will be one of the most important technologies for human survival in the future, because when AI and robots become so advanced, I believe that humans will need to have a mathematical coprocessor in their brains to stay relevant and compete with AI and robots. We've also invested in other companies like Rumble, which is a very good video platform, very competitive, comparable to Youtube, and it's growing greatly, with 60-70 million users right now.
Host: Your investment portfolio is very strong. But your core business controls over 60% of the stablecoin market. We've seen the "Genius Act" make some progress on Capitol Hill, but it has faced some resistance from Senate Democrats. David Sacks from the White House said he remains very optimistic that this bill will pass (it was approved by the Senate on June 17). My question is, once there are clear rules, what will the competitive landscape look like, assuming there will be a large number of new stablecoins entering the market? We have seen this happen in the past few years, for example, when Paypal launched its own stablecoin, but its market cap is still below $1 billion, making it difficult for many to compete with Tether. USDC is currently in second place, but there is still a gap between you and them. So what is your view on how the competitive landscape will change after policy changes?
Paolo: I love competition. But I think the competition will be focused on competing with our second largest competitor, Circle, rather than us. The reason is that all the companies that have announced that they want to be stablecoins come from the traditional financial system. The success of USDT lies in the fact that we understand that there are 3 billion people in this world who do not have bank accounts. These people are not bad people, they are very good, they are just not noticed by the banks because they are poor. To get the bank interested, you need to contribute at least $150 per year to the bank in fees and commissions. But if you live in a country where the average daily wage is $1.34, or in Africa, where the monthly salary is only $80, you simply can't give the bank $150 a year. So all stablecoins created by traditional financial companies will be offered to their existing customers. And we're serving 3 billion people – those 3 billion people who are considered "niche markets" by the banking system. Many competitors say that Tether serves a "niche" of banks, but half of the world's population should not be called a "segment" (Niche). We were built by "pushing the ground". We have built a lot of kiosks in Africa, and by 2030 we will have 100,000 kiosks in Africa, providing electricity to people in small African villages through solar panels. We also already have hundreds of thousands of touchpoints in Latin America, providing stablecoin and Bitcoin education.
Host: I have always been curious because Tether has always placed great importance on offline payments, allowing users to pay with stablecoins in their crypto wallets using their mobile phones. However, in many parts of the world, cash is still the primary economy. Therefore, stablecoins are indeed essential in areas lacking banking services, transfers, and secure storage, especially in high-inflation economies. But are people really willing to pay with cryptocurrencies in physical stores?
Paolo: Increasingly willing. We now have around 420 million users, with an additional 30 million wallets added each quarter, almost like Facebook back in the day. This proves that money is the best social network. In fact, even in the poorest countries, more and more people can afford cheap smartphones that can still run wallets. Through word of mouth, our user base is rapidly growing. All competitors focus on institutional clients, while we have built millions of touchpoints connected to the real world; we start from the streets, not from the ivory tower.
Host: Speaking of this, I met a great developer in South Africa, Kgothatso Ngako, who integrated Lightning into mobile payments, allowing people to send Bitcoin via SMS without needing data. Is this technology similar to what you are doing, enabling people to use it without a data terminal?
Paolo: We support many terminals like this, capable of accepting Bitcoin Lightning payments and USDT stablecoin payments. This is one of our different exploratory directions. At the same time, we are establishing service kiosks in Africa, allowing us to directly reach people in villages who receive remittances (for example, remittances coming from Europe or the US), and teach them how to store funds using smartphones, and then they will pass on the knowledge to everyone in the village. We rely on word-of-mouth, and we practically validate our technology in the smallest and most remote villages in Africa. If it works there, it will work elsewhere too.
Host: You welcome competition and are not worried about new players entering the market. I recall a report from the Wall Street Journal stating that major Wall Street banks are considering launching a unified digital dollar, such as JP Morgan and Citibank, but they will compete for Circle's market share, as Tether focuses on emerging markets.
Paolo: We're on the streets every day, we have a whole team doing education, working with local partners. JP Morgan will never go to a small African village to teach people how to use their stablecoins. That's what we do. JP Morgan and these companies will only sell stablecoins to wealthy people who are already rich, which is why I think stablecoins are the "icing on the cake" in the US, but not a necessity. In the U.S., you have more than a dozen payment methods, the competition is fierce, the payment network is the best, and the dollar is the best payment track. But outside of the United States, everything is not so good, people are eager to have dollars, but cash dollars are getting harder and harder to come by. So the best way for people to hold the U.S. dollar is in USDT. But no one pays attention to this market, only us.
Host: Have you ever thought about leaving the Cayman Islands after achieving the scale that Tether has today?
Paolo: Actually, we have now moved from BVI (British Virgin Islands) to El Salvador, and our company is now registered there. El Salvador is currently the only country with a comprehensive and intelligent regulatory framework for stablecoins. The regulatory framework for stablecoins in Europe (MiCA) is terrible. They require stablecoin issuers to keep 60% of their reserves in uninsured cash deposits. Look at our main competitor's situation in 2023 with Silicon Valley Bank; they had $3 billion in uninsured cash deposits at Silicon Valley Bank, and when the bank collapsed, the competitor almost went under, and later the FDIC rescued the bank. So the stablecoin was saved. But you should buy government bonds; you shouldn't keep uninsured cash. The MiCA license requires you to keep uninsured cash, so we decided not to apply because it's a bad license. El Salvador now has the most comprehensive and secure regulatory system. The United States will also catch up soon and have a good regulatory framework. Until then, we can only play the cards we have.
Host: I previously spoke with Bo Hines, who is the head of the Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Asset. He mentioned that Tether is the seventh largest buyer of U.S. Treasury bonds and one of the highest historical holders. Once the Genius Act or other stablecoin legislation is passed, the demand for U.S. Treasury bonds will surge overnight.
……
Do you have any concerns about the "Genius Act"? Do you support other legislation that is being promoted?
Paolo: I think the "Genius Act" is very reasonable and comprehensive. It is crucial to establish appropriate regulations for stablecoins, as stablecoins are the most powerful application of blockchain technology.
Host: Currently, Tether regularly publishes self-attestation reports regarding the transparency of its books. Will more be disclosed in the future? After all, there have been some controversies and settlements in the past.
Paolo: It needs to be clarified that no stablecoin issuer, or rather, no meaningful stablecoin issuer has conducted a complete audit of their reserves. All stablecoin issuers—including our largest competitors—have only provided self-affirmation. In the past, the media always picked on us, but in fact, this is not just a Tether issue; all major stablecoin companies have not conducted complete audits, only self-affirmation. Let me explain, in 2022, Senator Warren sent an open letter to all auditing companies saying not to touch cryptocurrencies. At that time, the OCC (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) was also trying to suppress cryptocurrencies. The situation has changed now, but in the past, the Big Four auditing firms could not possibly sit down and talk with stablecoin companies; it wasn't just us, other companies were the same. Now the government's attitude has changed and is starting to embrace cryptocurrencies.
Just in the last month and a half, we've started to have very positive conversations with some of the Big Four, and it's going to be a long process, but now it's positive, at least to start a conversation. We have open discussions with them. I'm confident that we'll do a full audit. I love transparency, and I'm the most transparent person in the company. If you look at our self-certification, it's more detailed than the competition, disclosing all the different investment classes, disclosing how much gold, Bitcoin, other assets, how many treasuries we have. Last year, we did more than two years of due diligence, and an agency in the United States spent two years doing the world's largest due diligence on our reserves, turning over every stone. At the beginning of 2024, the results of the due diligence will be made public, confirming that our reserves are true. They were inspected in January and May. I also disclosed to the Attorney General of New York all the processes and reserves for two years as part of the settlement. We are the most scrutinized company in the world. I know that our company is transparent and setting an example for the industry as a whole, and I am correcting a lot of misconceptions about us.
View Original
The content is for reference only, not a solicitation or offer. No investment, tax, or legal advice provided. See Disclaimer for more risks disclosure.
Reward
like
2
Share
Comment
0/400
GateUser-f0d11323
· 7h ago
Sit tight and hold on, we're about to To da moon 🛫
Reply0
GateUser-f0d11323
· 7h ago
Sit tight and hold on, we're about to To da moon 🛫
Tether CEO Interview: Investing in Agriculture, Dairy, as well as AI and Brain-Computer Interfaces
Author: MD
Produced by: Bright Company
During the global Bitcoin conference at the end of May, Paolo Ardoino, the CEO of Tether, the largest issuer of the global stablecoin USDT, was interviewed by CNBC.
In a speech at the Bitcoin conference, Paolo Ardoino stated that there are approximately 420 million USDT users in emerging markets and developing countries, accounting for 62% of decentralized trading volume. "More significantly, about 35% of USDT users treat it as a savings account—because they live in countries like Turkey, Argentina, and Vietnam, where local currencies have depreciated severely, and their only option is to save in US dollars, with USDT being their most practical choice."
According to Coingecko's data on June 18, the overall market value of USDT is approximately $155 billion, with a trading volume of about $27.7 billion in the past 24 hours, making it the largest stablecoin issuer in the world; the recently listed "first stablecoin stock" Circle (CRCL.US) has an overall market value of approximately $61.5 billion, with a trading volume of about $9.2 billion in the past 24 hours.
However, market analysts believe that under the framework of the "Genius Act" (i.e., the "Guiding and Establishing the National Innovation Act for Stablecoins in the United States", which was passed by the U.S. Senate on June 17 and is awaiting review by the House of Representatives), Tether's compliance level is lower than that of Circle, which is one of the reasons why Circle went public before Tether. Paolo Ardoino also responded to questions about "offshore structures" and audits in an interview, stating that they have had good communication with the Big Four accounting firms, but he also mentioned that "this will be a long journey."
It is worth mentioning that Paolo Ardoino specifically shared the logic behind Tether's investments in agriculture, dairy, as well as technology companies such as video platforms and brain-computer interfaces.
According to Tether's official website, Tether announced the acquisition of the Latin American agricultural company Adecoagro on April 30 of this year. Adecoagro's main business includes the production of sugar, ethanol, dairy products, and crops in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. The company owns 210,400 hectares of farmland and several industrial facilities in these countries.
In this regard, Paolo Ardoino stated in an interview, "We are still exploring how to show agricultural businesses and commodity producers (such as wheat, rice, milk, etc.) how to use stablecoins for international trade. For example, Adecoagro sells products to Asia and the United States, and to make these sales more efficient, they have started considering using stablecoins to complete transactions."
Tether's latest announced investment is its acquisition of a 31.9% stake in the Canadian gold royalty company Elemental Altus Royalties, which was announced on June 12. Tether stated that this investment is aimed at "integrating long-term stable assets like gold and Bitcoin into its ecosystem," serving both as a hedge and as part of its commitment to building a resilient digital economic infrastructure.
The following is the transcript of the interview compiled by "Mingliang Company" (with edits):
Host: Tether is one of the companies with the highest profit per employee in the world. Before we delve into the stablecoin strategy and some of the work you are doing, I am interested in some of your recent investments, including the investment in a dairy company in Brazil. So please talk about your investments in artificial intelligence and neuroscience, as well as the reasons you are optimistic about dairy products and milk in the long term.
Paolo: First of all, thank you for your invitation. From the outside, people might think we are doing some random things, but that's not the case.
Host: When you have a large amount of capital, you must invest wisely, which is also why I want to know what you do.
Paolo: Over the past two and a half years, we have generated twenty million dollars in profit. You must think and develop a very precise investment plan. We receive almost a hundred investment projects every day, so we have to be very selective. Part of our investments—just to clarify, these are investments outside of stablecoin reserves—includes a portion of long-term safe investments such as land and agriculture. Tether is known for creating and owning the largest stablecoin in the world, and the USDT stablecoin is a tool that brings stability to people, communities, and nations. We bring stability to countries where the local currency is extremely fragile, such as the Argentine peso or the Turkish lira, so stability is at our core. And for the long-term stability of humanity, nothing is more stable and necessary than land and agriculture.
The reason we are investing in Adecoagro – a publicly traded company and the largest single landowner in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil – is that we want our portfolio to have exposure to "real Bitcoin" – land, because land is scarce and you cannot create more land. Of course, you could say to go to Mars to create more land, but in reality, humanity will always need land, and we need agriculture, good agriculture, to survive and develop. This is why we are allocating part of our portfolio to land businesses. Additionally, we are exploring how to show agricultural companies and commodity producers (such as wheat, rice, milk, etc.) how to use stablecoins for international trade. For example, Adecoagro sells its products to Asia and the United States, and to make these sales more efficient, they are starting to consider using stablecoins to complete transactions. This is a very attractive way, as we believe commodity trading companies will become the biggest drivers of stablecoin adoption in the next five years.
Of course, we have more new types of investments in new technologies, such as artificial intelligence or biotechnology. I love these areas because I'm a geek by nature, so we invested in NorthernData. We are the majority shareholder of NorthernData, perhaps the world's largest independent AI infrastructure provider. By independent, I mean that it is not Google, not Microsoft, not Amazon. They have 24,000 GPUs, and we plan to use these resources at Tether to build our own AI models in the future. We are building our own AI platform at Tether. We've also invested in biotech and neurotech, especially one of my favorite companies, BlackrockNeurotech., which can be said to be a competitor to Neuralink, which is actually a competitor to them. We're creating the world's most advanced brain-computer interface that can read 90 words per minute from the human brain, which is almost close to the speed at which a normal person speaks, if you think about word speed. I think this will be one of the most important technologies for human survival in the future, because when AI and robots become so advanced, I believe that humans will need to have a mathematical coprocessor in their brains to stay relevant and compete with AI and robots. We've also invested in other companies like Rumble, which is a very good video platform, very competitive, comparable to Youtube, and it's growing greatly, with 60-70 million users right now.
Host: Your investment portfolio is very strong. But your core business controls over 60% of the stablecoin market. We've seen the "Genius Act" make some progress on Capitol Hill, but it has faced some resistance from Senate Democrats. David Sacks from the White House said he remains very optimistic that this bill will pass (it was approved by the Senate on June 17). My question is, once there are clear rules, what will the competitive landscape look like, assuming there will be a large number of new stablecoins entering the market? We have seen this happen in the past few years, for example, when Paypal launched its own stablecoin, but its market cap is still below $1 billion, making it difficult for many to compete with Tether. USDC is currently in second place, but there is still a gap between you and them. So what is your view on how the competitive landscape will change after policy changes?
Paolo: I love competition. But I think the competition will be focused on competing with our second largest competitor, Circle, rather than us. The reason is that all the companies that have announced that they want to be stablecoins come from the traditional financial system. The success of USDT lies in the fact that we understand that there are 3 billion people in this world who do not have bank accounts. These people are not bad people, they are very good, they are just not noticed by the banks because they are poor. To get the bank interested, you need to contribute at least $150 per year to the bank in fees and commissions. But if you live in a country where the average daily wage is $1.34, or in Africa, where the monthly salary is only $80, you simply can't give the bank $150 a year. So all stablecoins created by traditional financial companies will be offered to their existing customers. And we're serving 3 billion people – those 3 billion people who are considered "niche markets" by the banking system. Many competitors say that Tether serves a "niche" of banks, but half of the world's population should not be called a "segment" (Niche). We were built by "pushing the ground". We have built a lot of kiosks in Africa, and by 2030 we will have 100,000 kiosks in Africa, providing electricity to people in small African villages through solar panels. We also already have hundreds of thousands of touchpoints in Latin America, providing stablecoin and Bitcoin education.
Host: I have always been curious because Tether has always placed great importance on offline payments, allowing users to pay with stablecoins in their crypto wallets using their mobile phones. However, in many parts of the world, cash is still the primary economy. Therefore, stablecoins are indeed essential in areas lacking banking services, transfers, and secure storage, especially in high-inflation economies. But are people really willing to pay with cryptocurrencies in physical stores?
Paolo: Increasingly willing. We now have around 420 million users, with an additional 30 million wallets added each quarter, almost like Facebook back in the day. This proves that money is the best social network. In fact, even in the poorest countries, more and more people can afford cheap smartphones that can still run wallets. Through word of mouth, our user base is rapidly growing. All competitors focus on institutional clients, while we have built millions of touchpoints connected to the real world; we start from the streets, not from the ivory tower.
Host: Speaking of this, I met a great developer in South Africa, Kgothatso Ngako, who integrated Lightning into mobile payments, allowing people to send Bitcoin via SMS without needing data. Is this technology similar to what you are doing, enabling people to use it without a data terminal?
Paolo: We support many terminals like this, capable of accepting Bitcoin Lightning payments and USDT stablecoin payments. This is one of our different exploratory directions. At the same time, we are establishing service kiosks in Africa, allowing us to directly reach people in villages who receive remittances (for example, remittances coming from Europe or the US), and teach them how to store funds using smartphones, and then they will pass on the knowledge to everyone in the village. We rely on word-of-mouth, and we practically validate our technology in the smallest and most remote villages in Africa. If it works there, it will work elsewhere too.
Host: You welcome competition and are not worried about new players entering the market. I recall a report from the Wall Street Journal stating that major Wall Street banks are considering launching a unified digital dollar, such as JP Morgan and Citibank, but they will compete for Circle's market share, as Tether focuses on emerging markets.
Paolo: We're on the streets every day, we have a whole team doing education, working with local partners. JP Morgan will never go to a small African village to teach people how to use their stablecoins. That's what we do. JP Morgan and these companies will only sell stablecoins to wealthy people who are already rich, which is why I think stablecoins are the "icing on the cake" in the US, but not a necessity. In the U.S., you have more than a dozen payment methods, the competition is fierce, the payment network is the best, and the dollar is the best payment track. But outside of the United States, everything is not so good, people are eager to have dollars, but cash dollars are getting harder and harder to come by. So the best way for people to hold the U.S. dollar is in USDT. But no one pays attention to this market, only us.
Host: Have you ever thought about leaving the Cayman Islands after achieving the scale that Tether has today?
Paolo: Actually, we have now moved from BVI (British Virgin Islands) to El Salvador, and our company is now registered there. El Salvador is currently the only country with a comprehensive and intelligent regulatory framework for stablecoins. The regulatory framework for stablecoins in Europe (MiCA) is terrible. They require stablecoin issuers to keep 60% of their reserves in uninsured cash deposits. Look at our main competitor's situation in 2023 with Silicon Valley Bank; they had $3 billion in uninsured cash deposits at Silicon Valley Bank, and when the bank collapsed, the competitor almost went under, and later the FDIC rescued the bank. So the stablecoin was saved. But you should buy government bonds; you shouldn't keep uninsured cash. The MiCA license requires you to keep uninsured cash, so we decided not to apply because it's a bad license. El Salvador now has the most comprehensive and secure regulatory system. The United States will also catch up soon and have a good regulatory framework. Until then, we can only play the cards we have.
Host: I previously spoke with Bo Hines, who is the head of the Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Asset. He mentioned that Tether is the seventh largest buyer of U.S. Treasury bonds and one of the highest historical holders. Once the Genius Act or other stablecoin legislation is passed, the demand for U.S. Treasury bonds will surge overnight.
……
Do you have any concerns about the "Genius Act"? Do you support other legislation that is being promoted?
Paolo: I think the "Genius Act" is very reasonable and comprehensive. It is crucial to establish appropriate regulations for stablecoins, as stablecoins are the most powerful application of blockchain technology.
Host: Currently, Tether regularly publishes self-attestation reports regarding the transparency of its books. Will more be disclosed in the future? After all, there have been some controversies and settlements in the past.
Paolo: It needs to be clarified that no stablecoin issuer, or rather, no meaningful stablecoin issuer has conducted a complete audit of their reserves. All stablecoin issuers—including our largest competitors—have only provided self-affirmation. In the past, the media always picked on us, but in fact, this is not just a Tether issue; all major stablecoin companies have not conducted complete audits, only self-affirmation. Let me explain, in 2022, Senator Warren sent an open letter to all auditing companies saying not to touch cryptocurrencies. At that time, the OCC (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) was also trying to suppress cryptocurrencies. The situation has changed now, but in the past, the Big Four auditing firms could not possibly sit down and talk with stablecoin companies; it wasn't just us, other companies were the same. Now the government's attitude has changed and is starting to embrace cryptocurrencies.
Just in the last month and a half, we've started to have very positive conversations with some of the Big Four, and it's going to be a long process, but now it's positive, at least to start a conversation. We have open discussions with them. I'm confident that we'll do a full audit. I love transparency, and I'm the most transparent person in the company. If you look at our self-certification, it's more detailed than the competition, disclosing all the different investment classes, disclosing how much gold, Bitcoin, other assets, how many treasuries we have. Last year, we did more than two years of due diligence, and an agency in the United States spent two years doing the world's largest due diligence on our reserves, turning over every stone. At the beginning of 2024, the results of the due diligence will be made public, confirming that our reserves are true. They were inspected in January and May. I also disclosed to the Attorney General of New York all the processes and reserves for two years as part of the settlement. We are the most scrutinized company in the world. I know that our company is transparent and setting an example for the industry as a whole, and I am correcting a lot of misconceptions about us.