“We Haven’t Considered Ourselves Crypto for a While”: Tether CEO Makes Statement Following KPMG Audit

• KPMG conducted a physical audit of Tether’s reserves.
• The firm verified around 150 tons of gold in a secret vault in Switzerland — reserves exceeded liabilities by $6.8 billion.
• CEO Paolo Ardoino said Tether no longer considers itself a crypto company.

Stablecoin giant Tether brought in Big Four auditor KPMG to review its reserves — including a physical count of roughly 150 tons of gold held in a Swiss vault. The audit confirmed the gold is there, and that total reserves exceed liabilities by $6.8 billion.

“It was physically demanding work,” Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino commented on the audit in an interview with Fortune.

Journalists noted that the audit should put to rest one of the crypto world’s longest-running conspiracy theories: that USDT is not properly backed and that the company will one day carry out a mass redemption.

Tether No Longer Considers Itself a Crypto Company

“We haven’t considered ourselves a crypto company for a long time. I think we are a digital dollar and digital gold company,” Ardoino said.

He said Tether has more than 650 million users worldwide, most of them concentrated in Africa and South America — regions where governments have repeatedly devalued national currencies, and where demand for stable digital assets is especially high.

The company has also been investing aggressively outside financial services for the past two years — in decentralized communications, agriculture, and a network of solar-powered kiosks that provide off-grid electricity for a few dollars a month, the statement said.

Artificial Intelligence and Tether

Tether’s next strategic focus is foundational AI services for its audience in developing countries. Ardoino notes that even in the poorest countries, almost everyone has a mobile phone capable of running a simple AI model. The goal is not cutting-edge models, but affordable baseline tools across several verticals: healthcare, finance, sports, and others.

The business model envisions charging a few dollars per month via Tether’s stablecoin or another form of digital payment.

Paolo Ardoino noted that his main concern is that the already high income inequality in society, which is undermining its stability, could transform into a much deeper chasm — where the wealth gap would be compounded by an intellectual gap.

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