Tether CEO Says Company is Progressing Toward US Return

Stablecoin issuer Tether is reportedly on track to return to doing business in the United States.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said Wednesday during a Bloomberg Television interview that the company is “well in progress of establishing our U.S. domestic strategy” and plans to focus on payments and interbank settlement and trading, Bloomberg reported Wednesday (July 23).

El Salvador-based Tether, whose USDT stablecoin is the most traded cryptocurrency by volume globally, was banned from operating in New York and paid almost $60 million to the state and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 2021 to settle their allegations that the company made untrue and misleading claims, according to the report.

While expanding into the U.S., Tether continues to focus on emerging markets, Ardoino said Wednesday, per the report.

Addressing questions about Tether’s failure to provide audits, despite promising to do so, Ardoino said the company has talked with auditors about engaging them, according to the report.

Ardoino also told Bloomberg that, “in general,” Tether is not interested in becoming a public company.

In a May 23 interview with Bloomberg TV, Ardoino said that Tether plans to continue to focus on markets outside the U.S. even as it works to become compliant with U.S. regulation of stablecoins.

That report noted that most of Tether’s reserve is made up of assets that would be compliant, but some of it is comprised of non-compliant ones like bitcoin and secured loans, and that the company currently releases quarterly attestations signed off by BDO Italia SpA rather than an audit of its reserves by a Big Four accounting firm (namely, Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC).

While Tether aims to become compliant in the U.S., Ardoino said in May, “our customer base are the 30 billion people unbanked that are not touching the banking system.”

It was reported in May that Tether plans to launch a new dollar-pegged stablecoin in the U.S. within a year.

The company also released its first-quarter 2025 attestation in May, saying that as of March 31, Tether had $149.28 billion in total assets against $143.68 billion in liabilities for fiat-backed stablecoin holdings.

It was reported at the time that Tether’s tokens represent 70% of the stablecoin market.