Four people owned 86% of Tether Holdings, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported. Documents confirming the information date from 2018.
The publication noted that the operator of the stablecoin USDT with a market value of $68 billion has not disclosed information to the same extent as corresponding traditional institutions.
The company was founded by former plastic surgeon Giancarlo Devasini and Brock Pierce — entrepreneur and crypto evangelist. The firm was registered in the British Virgin Islands in September 2014.
Soon Pierce left Tether, and Devasini remains its chief financial officer.
“The United States would be better off if patriotic Americans like me still owned the business. The equity I walked away from probably amounted to $6-10 billion. Was that the right choice? I don’t know,” the entrepreneur was quoted by WSJ.
Devasini holds Italian citizenship.
He also helped develop and launch the crypto exchange Bitfinex. The two companies share much of their management. For example, the chief executive in both is Jean-Louis van der Velden. However, according to WSJ, key decisions are made by Devasini.
Pierce, through his Internet Gaming Entertainment company, was connected to Steve Bannon — once a strategist in the Trump administration. Tether’s management did not reach a consensus on how to leverage these relationships, and the final veto on considering the issue was imposed by Devasini.
Pierce, through his venture firm Blockchain Capital, bought a small stake in Tether in 2017. As of 2018 Devasini owned 43% of its shares, and 15% belonged to van der Velden and Stuart Hoegner. The latter has served as chief legal officer since 2014.
The link between the company and Bitfinex emerged in 2016, when the exchange was hacked for $65 million.
The platform issued the BFX token to compensate users for the damages. The asset served as a kind of IOU. A sizable portion of the coins went to Thai-born businessman Chakrit Sakunrit, as the owner of a large stake in Bitfinex. In the United Kingdom he is known as Christopher Harborne. Additionally, the entrepreneur bought more BFX at a significant discount, according to WSJ sources. As a result, Harborne became the fourth de facto owner of Tether, accounting for a total of 86% of the company’s shares.
In October 2022 the operator of the stablecoin disclosed that the share of US Treasuries in the collateral for USDT reached 58%. The publication notes that the firm earns roughly $3 billion a year from interest.
Earlier in December, Tether called a WSJ article about the stablecoin “the media’s hypocrisy, asleep at the wheel.”