Original title: Interview with Tether CEO: Investing in agriculture, dairy industry, as well as AI and brain-computer interfaces.
During the global Bitcoin conference at the end of May, Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, the largest stablecoin issuer USDT, was interviewed by CNBC.
During his speech at the Bitcoin conference, Paolo Ardoino stated that USDT has about 420 million 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 their local currencies have depreciated severely, they can only choose to save in dollars, and USDT is their most practical option."
According to data from Coingecko 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 overall market value of USDC issued by Circle (CRCL.US), which was recently listed as the 'first stablecoin stock', is approximately $61.5 billion, with a trading volume of about $9.2 billion in the past 24 hours.
However, some market analysts believe that under the framework of the "Genius Act" (i.e., the "Guiding and Building the National Innovation Act for U.S. Stablecoins", which was passed by the U.S. Senate on June 17 and then awaiting consideration by the U.S. House of Representatives), Tether's compliance level is lower than that of Circle, which is one of the reasons why Circle has priority over Tether's listing. Paolo Ardoino also responded to questions about "offshore structuring" and auditing in an interview, saying that he had already communicated well with the Big Four accounting firms, but he also said that "it 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 like video platforms and brain-computer interfaces.
According to the Tether company's website, Tether announced the acquisition of the Latin American agricultural company Adecoagro on April 30 of this year. Adecoagro's main business covers 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 enterprises 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 are starting to consider using stablecoins to complete transactions."
Tether's latest investment was the acquisition of a 31.9% stake in Canadian gold concessionaire Elemental Altus Royalties, announced on June 12. In response, Tether said the investment was an attempt to "integrate long-term stable assets such as gold and Bitcoin into its ecosystem" as a hedge and as part of its commitment to building a resilient digital economy infrastructure.
The following is the interview text compiled by "Mingliang Company" (with omissions):
Moderator: Tether is one of the most profitable companies per employee in the world. Before we dive into the stablecoin strategy and some of the work you're doing, I'm interested in some of your recent investments, including an investment in a dairy company in Brazil. So talk a little bit about your investments in AI and neuroscience, and why you've been bullish on dairy and milk for a long time.
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: In the last two and a half years, we've generated $20 million in profits. You have to think and make a very precise investment plan. We receive almost hundreds of investments every day, so we have to be selective. A portion of the investments – which, by the way, are investments outside of the stablecoin reserves, and to clarify – a portion of our portfolio is long-term safe investments, such as land and agriculture. Tether is known for creating and owning the world's largest stablecoin, a tool that brings stability to people, communities, and countries. We bring stability to countries whose currencies are extremely fragile, such as the Argentine peso or the Turkish lira, so stability is at the heart of what we do. And for the long-term stability of humanity, nothing is more stable and necessary than land and agriculture.
The reason why we're investing in Adecoagro – which is a publicly traded company and the largest single landowner in Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil – is because we want our portfolio to have exposure to the "real Bitcoin" – land, because land is scarce and you can't create more land. Of course, you can say go to Mars to create more land, but in reality, human beings will always need land, and they need agriculture, good agriculture to survive and develop. That's why we allocate a portion of our portfolio to the land business. In addition, we are exploring how to show agribusinesses and commodity producers (e.g., wheat, rice, milk, etc.) how to use stablecoins for international trade. For example, Adecoagro sells its products to Asia and the United States, and in order to make these sales more efficient, they are starting to consider using stablecoins to complete transactions. This is a very attractive approach, as we believe that commodity trading companies will be the biggest driver of stablecoin adoption over 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 a majority shareholder in NorthernData, perhaps the world's largest independent AI infrastructure provider. By independent, I mean not Google, not Microsoft, not Amazon. They have 24,000 GPUs, and we plan to use those resources at Tether to build our own AI models in the future. We're 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 theirs. 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 that is very competitive and comparable to Youtube and has grown greatly, now with 60-70 million users.
Moderator: Your portfolio is very strong. But your core business is to control more than 60% of the stablecoin market. We've seen some progress on Capitol Hill with the Genius Act, but we've met with some resistance from Senate Democrats. David Sacks of the White House said he remains very optimistic that the bill will pass (it was passed by the Senate on June 17). My question is what the competitive landscape will look like once there are clear rules, assuming there will be a large number of new stablecoins entering the market. We've also seen this happen in the past few years, such as PayPal launching its own stablecoin, but the market cap is still below $1 billion, so a lot of people have a hard time competing with Tether. USDC is currently in second place, but there is still some distance from you. So what do you think about the change in the competitive landscape after the policy change?
Paolo: I love competition. But I think the competition is going to be mostly focused on competing with our second largest competitor, Circle, not us. The reason is that all the companies that have announced that they want to be stablecoins come from the traditional financial system. USDT's success lies in the fact that we understand that there are 3 billion people in this world who are unbanked. 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 emphasis on offline payments, allowing users to make payments using stablecoins in their crypto wallets via their phones. However, many places in the world still operate on a cash economy. Therefore, stablecoins are indeed important for areas without banking services, remittances, and secure storage of value, especially in high-inflation economies. But are people really willing to pay with cryptocurrencies in physical stores?
Paolo: More and more willing. We now have about 420 million users and 30 million new wallets added every quarter, almost like Facebook back then. This proves that money is the best social network. In fact, even in the poorest countries, more and more people are able to buy cheap smartphones that still run their wallets. Relying on word-of-mouth, our user base is growing rapidly. While all of our competitors are focused on institutional clients, and we've built millions of touchpoints with real-world contact, we're starting on the streets, not ivory towers.
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 operate without data terminals?
Paolo: We support many such terminals that can accept Bitcoin Lightning payments and USDT stablecoin payments. This is one of our different exploration 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 from Europe or the United States) 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 to spread, and we practically verify our technology in the smallest and most remote villages in Africa. If it works there, it will work anywhere else.
Host: You welcome competition and are not worried about new players entering the market. I recalled a report from The Wall Street Journal stating that large Wall Street banks are considering launching a unified digital dollar, such as JP Morgan and Citibank, but they will compete for market share with Circle, 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 village in Africa 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 now that you've scaled Tether to this level?
Paolo: Actually, we've now moved from the BVI (British Virgin Islands) to El Salvador, where our company is now registered. El Salvador is currently the only country with well-established, smart stablecoin regulation. Stablecoin regulation (MiCA) in Europe is terrible. They require stablecoin issuers to keep 60% of their reserves in uninsured cash deposits. Look at what happened to our main competitor at Silicon Valley Bank in 2023, they had $3 billion in uninsured cash deposits at Silicon Valley Bank, and as a result, the bank collapsed, the competitor almost died, and then the FDIC saved the bank. So the stablecoin was saved. But you should buy Treasury bonds, and you shouldn't put uninsured cash. The MiCA license requires you to put uninsured cash, so we decided not to apply because it was a terrible license. El Salvador now has one of the most complete and secure regulatory systems. The U.S. will also catch up quickly and have a very good regulatory system. Until then, we can only play the cards in our hands.
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 holders in history. Once the GeniusAct or other stablecoin bills are 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 advanced?
Paolo: I think the "Genius Act" is very reasonable and comprehensive. It is very important to establish appropriate rules for stablecoins because 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: To be clear, none of the stablecoin issuers, or any meaningful stablecoin issuers, have done a full audit of their reserves, and all stablecoin issuers, including our biggest competitors, have only proven themselves. In the past, the media always picked on us to talk about things, but in fact, this is not Tether's problem, all the big stablecoin companies have not done a full audit, only self-certification. Let me explain, in 2022, Senator Warren sent an open letter to all audit firms saying not to touch cryptocurrency. At that time, the OCC (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) also tried to crack down on cryptocurrency. Now the situation has changed, but in the past, it was impossible for the big four audit firms to sit down with stablecoin companies, not just us, but other companies as well. Now the government has changed its attitude and is embracing 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. In early 2024, the results of the due diligence were made public, confirming the authenticity of our reserves. They did the check-ups in both 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
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Dialogue with Tether: Stablecoin Business Layout from Agricultural Investment to Brain-Machine Interface
Author: MD
Produced by: Bright Company
Original title: Interview with Tether CEO: Investing in agriculture, dairy industry, as well as AI and brain-computer interfaces.
During the global Bitcoin conference at the end of May, Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, the largest stablecoin issuer USDT, was interviewed by CNBC.
During his speech at the Bitcoin conference, Paolo Ardoino stated that USDT has about 420 million 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 their local currencies have depreciated severely, they can only choose to save in dollars, and USDT is their most practical option."
According to data from Coingecko 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 overall market value of USDC issued by Circle (CRCL.US), which was recently listed as the 'first stablecoin stock', is approximately $61.5 billion, with a trading volume of about $9.2 billion in the past 24 hours.
However, some market analysts believe that under the framework of the "Genius Act" (i.e., the "Guiding and Building the National Innovation Act for U.S. Stablecoins", which was passed by the U.S. Senate on June 17 and then awaiting consideration by the U.S. House of Representatives), Tether's compliance level is lower than that of Circle, which is one of the reasons why Circle has priority over Tether's listing. Paolo Ardoino also responded to questions about "offshore structuring" and auditing in an interview, saying that he had already communicated well with the Big Four accounting firms, but he also said that "it 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 like video platforms and brain-computer interfaces.
According to the Tether company's website, Tether announced the acquisition of the Latin American agricultural company Adecoagro on April 30 of this year. Adecoagro's main business covers 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 enterprises 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 are starting to consider using stablecoins to complete transactions."
Tether's latest investment was the acquisition of a 31.9% stake in Canadian gold concessionaire Elemental Altus Royalties, announced on June 12. In response, Tether said the investment was an attempt to "integrate long-term stable assets such as gold and Bitcoin into its ecosystem" as a hedge and as part of its commitment to building a resilient digital economy infrastructure.
The following is the interview text compiled by "Mingliang Company" (with omissions):
Moderator: Tether is one of the most profitable companies per employee in the world. Before we dive into the stablecoin strategy and some of the work you're doing, I'm interested in some of your recent investments, including an investment in a dairy company in Brazil. So talk a little bit about your investments in AI and neuroscience, and why you've been bullish on dairy and milk for a long time.
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: In the last two and a half years, we've generated $20 million in profits. You have to think and make a very precise investment plan. We receive almost hundreds of investments every day, so we have to be selective. A portion of the investments – which, by the way, are investments outside of the stablecoin reserves, and to clarify – a portion of our portfolio is long-term safe investments, such as land and agriculture. Tether is known for creating and owning the world's largest stablecoin, a tool that brings stability to people, communities, and countries. We bring stability to countries whose currencies are extremely fragile, such as the Argentine peso or the Turkish lira, so stability is at the heart of what we do. And for the long-term stability of humanity, nothing is more stable and necessary than land and agriculture.
The reason why we're investing in Adecoagro – which is a publicly traded company and the largest single landowner in Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil – is because we want our portfolio to have exposure to the "real Bitcoin" – land, because land is scarce and you can't create more land. Of course, you can say go to Mars to create more land, but in reality, human beings will always need land, and they need agriculture, good agriculture to survive and develop. That's why we allocate a portion of our portfolio to the land business. In addition, we are exploring how to show agribusinesses and commodity producers (e.g., wheat, rice, milk, etc.) how to use stablecoins for international trade. For example, Adecoagro sells its products to Asia and the United States, and in order to make these sales more efficient, they are starting to consider using stablecoins to complete transactions. This is a very attractive approach, as we believe that commodity trading companies will be the biggest driver of stablecoin adoption over 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 a majority shareholder in NorthernData, perhaps the world's largest independent AI infrastructure provider. By independent, I mean not Google, not Microsoft, not Amazon. They have 24,000 GPUs, and we plan to use those resources at Tether to build our own AI models in the future. We're 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 theirs. 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 that is very competitive and comparable to Youtube and has grown greatly, now with 60-70 million users.
Moderator: Your portfolio is very strong. But your core business is to control more than 60% of the stablecoin market. We've seen some progress on Capitol Hill with the Genius Act, but we've met with some resistance from Senate Democrats. David Sacks of the White House said he remains very optimistic that the bill will pass (it was passed by the Senate on June 17). My question is what the competitive landscape will look like once there are clear rules, assuming there will be a large number of new stablecoins entering the market. We've also seen this happen in the past few years, such as PayPal launching its own stablecoin, but the market cap is still below $1 billion, so a lot of people have a hard time competing with Tether. USDC is currently in second place, but there is still some distance from you. So what do you think about the change in the competitive landscape after the policy change?
Paolo: I love competition. But I think the competition is going to be mostly focused on competing with our second largest competitor, Circle, not us. The reason is that all the companies that have announced that they want to be stablecoins come from the traditional financial system. USDT's success lies in the fact that we understand that there are 3 billion people in this world who are unbanked. 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 emphasis on offline payments, allowing users to make payments using stablecoins in their crypto wallets via their phones. However, many places in the world still operate on a cash economy. Therefore, stablecoins are indeed important for areas without banking services, remittances, and secure storage of value, especially in high-inflation economies. But are people really willing to pay with cryptocurrencies in physical stores?
Paolo: More and more willing. We now have about 420 million users and 30 million new wallets added every quarter, almost like Facebook back then. This proves that money is the best social network. In fact, even in the poorest countries, more and more people are able to buy cheap smartphones that still run their wallets. Relying on word-of-mouth, our user base is growing rapidly. While all of our competitors are focused on institutional clients, and we've built millions of touchpoints with real-world contact, we're starting on the streets, not ivory towers.
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 operate without data terminals?
Paolo: We support many such terminals that can accept Bitcoin Lightning payments and USDT stablecoin payments. This is one of our different exploration 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 from Europe or the United States) 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 to spread, and we practically verify our technology in the smallest and most remote villages in Africa. If it works there, it will work anywhere else.
Host: You welcome competition and are not worried about new players entering the market. I recalled a report from The Wall Street Journal stating that large Wall Street banks are considering launching a unified digital dollar, such as JP Morgan and Citibank, but they will compete for market share with Circle, 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 village in Africa 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 now that you've scaled Tether to this level?
Paolo: Actually, we've now moved from the BVI (British Virgin Islands) to El Salvador, where our company is now registered. El Salvador is currently the only country with well-established, smart stablecoin regulation. Stablecoin regulation (MiCA) in Europe is terrible. They require stablecoin issuers to keep 60% of their reserves in uninsured cash deposits. Look at what happened to our main competitor at Silicon Valley Bank in 2023, they had $3 billion in uninsured cash deposits at Silicon Valley Bank, and as a result, the bank collapsed, the competitor almost died, and then the FDIC saved the bank. So the stablecoin was saved. But you should buy Treasury bonds, and you shouldn't put uninsured cash. The MiCA license requires you to put uninsured cash, so we decided not to apply because it was a terrible license. El Salvador now has one of the most complete and secure regulatory systems. The U.S. will also catch up quickly and have a very good regulatory system. Until then, we can only play the cards in our hands.
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 holders in history. Once the GeniusAct or other stablecoin bills are 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 advanced?
Paolo: I think the "Genius Act" is very reasonable and comprehensive. It is very important to establish appropriate rules for stablecoins because 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: To be clear, none of the stablecoin issuers, or any meaningful stablecoin issuers, have done a full audit of their reserves, and all stablecoin issuers, including our biggest competitors, have only proven themselves. In the past, the media always picked on us to talk about things, but in fact, this is not Tether's problem, all the big stablecoin companies have not done a full audit, only self-certification. Let me explain, in 2022, Senator Warren sent an open letter to all audit firms saying not to touch cryptocurrency. At that time, the OCC (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) also tried to crack down on cryptocurrency. Now the situation has changed, but in the past, it was impossible for the big four audit firms to sit down with stablecoin companies, not just us, but other companies as well. Now the government has changed its attitude and is embracing 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. In early 2024, the results of the due diligence were made public, confirming the authenticity of our reserves. They did the check-ups in both 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.