Tether CTO says the company has no plans to go public

The issuer of the stablecoin Tether is not considering the possibility of an IPO. In an interview CryptoPotato, the company’s CTO Paolo Ardoino said.

The stance of Tether’s leadership differs from Circle Internet Financial’s plans for taking the stablecoin USDC public. In July 2021, as part of taking the issuer to the public market via a reverse merger, Circle was valued at $4.5 billion. In February 2022, this figure doubled.

According to Ardoino, Wall Street is in a race for quarterly profits, while Tether pursues its mission of supporting the unbanked and those affected by devaluation of national currencies. Ardoino estimates there are about 2 billion such people worldwide.

“We want to remain an ‘instrument for people’,” he explained.

The company focuses on payments, not DeFi or servicing institutional interests. Marketing was not required for the project’s success, and nothing will change in that regard even as the list of competitors in the stablecoin segment expands, the CTO noted.

“You go to Turkey, Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Latin America, India — wherever you go, even Dubai, you will find someone who will exchange or accept USDT,” he explained.

The Tether CTO again repeated his thesis that UST is dangerous for the cryptocurrency market. An asset with a capitalization of more than $10 billion could pose a threat to the industry in the event of mass liquidation, he added.

“[…] imagine an algorithmic stablecoin with a supply backing of $80 billion and a downturn scenario of 50% or 60%. $40 billion — that’s the equivalent of a country’s GDP. It’s not that we necessarily like it when we have fiat in the collateral,” Ardoino said.

According to him, Tether would be ‘quite comfortable’ sitting in second to third place in the stablecoin capitalization rankings as the industry develops.

At present, with a market cap of $83.2 billion, USDT takes first place, USDC second ($48.8 billion), and Terra’s UST third ($18.7 billion).

As a reminder, in August 2021 an audit showed that 49% of Tether’s reserves consisted of commercial paper—short-term debt obligations.

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