{"id":73568,"date":"2023-02-03T16:00:51","date_gmt":"2023-02-03T14:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=73568"},"modified":"2025-09-09T14:49:56","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T11:49:56","slug":"the-wall-street-journal-reveals-tether-owners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/the-wall-street-journal-reveals-tether-owners\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wall Street Journal Reveals Tether Owners"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four people owned 86% of Tether Holdings, The Wall Street Journal<\/a> (WSJ) reported. Documents confirming the information date from 2018.<\/p>\n

The publication noted that the operator of the stablecoin USDT with a market value of $68 billion<\/a> has not disclosed information to the same extent as corresponding traditional institutions.<\/p>\n

The company was founded by former plastic surgeon Giancarlo Devasini and Brock Pierce \u2014 entrepreneur and crypto evangelist. The firm was registered in the British Virgin Islands in September 2014.<\/p>\n

Soon Pierce left Tether, and Devasini remains its chief financial officer.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe 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,\u201d the entrepreneur was quoted by WSJ.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Devasini holds Italian citizenship.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Pierce, through his Internet Gaming Entertainment company, was connected to Steve Bannon \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The link between the company and Bitfinex emerged in 2016, when the exchange was hacked for $65 million.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In October 2022 the operator of the stablecoin disclosed that the share of US Treasuries in the collateral for USDT reached 58%<\/a>. The publication notes that the firm earns roughly $3 billion a year from interest.<\/p>\n

Earlier in December, Tether called<\/a> a WSJ article about the stablecoin \u201cthe media\u2019s hypocrisy, asleep at the wheel.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Four people owned 86% of Tether Holdings, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported. Documents confirming the information date from 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":73569,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[83,1245],"class_list":["post-73568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-business","tag-tether-usdt"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"84","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73568"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73570,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73568\/revisions\/73570"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}