Tether CEO's Full Speech at Bitcoin Conference: We're Not a Printing Press, We're a Disintermediation Infrastructure Provider
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
Tether CEO's Full Speech at Bitcoin Conference: We're Not a Printing Press, We're a Disintermediation Infrastructure Provider
The cloud is not our friend. Bitcoin is.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsSpeech: Paolo Ardoino
Translation: Ethan, Odaily Planet Daily
Translator's note: At the Bitcoin 2025 conference, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino’s speech may not have been a "data bombardment" or "concept frenzy" like those from traditional Web3 executives, but it was surprisingly authentic, vivid, and even laced with dark humor. He compared Bitcoin to his childhood idol "Goku," referred to gold as "Bitcoin of nature," mocked API keys while emphasizing the aesthetics of peer-to-peer architecture, and casually dropped the line: "We are one of the world's largest Bitcoin miners." This keynote by Paolo Ardoino felt less like a corporate roadshow and more like an expression of technological faith—Tether is trying to expand stablecoins into a disintermediated infrastructure system, encompassing currency (USDT), value anchoring (BTC), communication (Keet), intelligent platforms (KUBA), and even identity and sovereignty.
In closing, no quote fits better than his own: "The cloud is not our friend. Bitcoin is."
Note: While translating this speech, we have made every effort to preserve its first-person perspective and original tone, while also refining and adjusting certain sentences with reference to the English source material.
Full transcript of Paolo Ardoino's speech:
Supporting Bitcoin is truly exhilarating. I love it deeply. Please pay close attention.
I'd like to start today’s talk with this image. It’s my favorite picture. It captures how I feel about Bitcoin: Bitcoin is like Goku. I was born in the 80s—Dragon Ball was part of my childhood—and Bitcoin is that powerful companion. Tether, on the other hand, is like another friend along the journey—not as strong, perhaps, but always reliable and essential.
TechFlow started from nothing back in 2014 and created the world’s first stablecoin—USDT. We’ve consistently focused on building products people genuinely need. Just now, I updated a slide because this morning our asset base surpassed $153 billion—a milestone we hadn’t anticipated when preparing the slides two days ago.
I want to highlight a pivotal moment that deeply moved me: the onset of the pandemic. Before that, Tether was primarily used as a medium for cryptocurrency trading. But starting with the pandemic, it rapidly transformed into a “digital dollar” used by hundreds of millions globally, becoming part of everyday life.
More importantly, since 2022, we haven’t even had a formal marketing team. So I can’t claim this growth resulted from “great operations” or clever advertising. The truth is: when you build something people truly need, it grows naturally, spreading through word of mouth.
Here are some figures you might find interesting: last year, we generated $13 billion in profit. Currently, we hold over $120 billion in U.S. Treasury securities. Additionally, we’ve begun significant investments in Bitcoin. As a company, we already own more than 100,000 bitcoins.
We also hold around 50 tons of gold. Yes, I know many Bitcoin supporters dislike gold, even avoiding mentioning it, as if gold threatens Bitcoin’s status. But I don’t see it that way. Bitcoin is perfect; gold is imperfect. Gold doesn’t compete with Bitcoin—it competes with fiat.
Personally, I see gold almost as nature’s “primitive Bitcoin.” And Bitcoin? That’s our human-made “digital gold.” We have approximately 420 million users across emerging markets and developing countries, accounting for 62% of decentralized transaction volume. More meaningfully, about 35% of USDT users treat it as a savings account—because they live in countries like Turkey, Argentina, and Vietnam, where local currencies depreciate at astonishing rates, forcing them to save in dollars, and USDT is their most practical option.
How do I view Tether? I see it as a company sharply contrasting traditional tech firms and financial institutions. Finance and Big Tech thrive on layers of intermediaries: financial middlemen take fees from every transaction, while tech giants control our data. Fundamentally, it’s the same issue: we lose sovereignty over both money and data.
Tether’s mission is to provide tools through technology that help people break free from these intermediaries and achieve true individual sovereignty.
We are a company born from Bitcoin. Everyone inside loves Bitcoin. Our headquarters is in the Bitcoin nation—El Salvador. A country plagued for 20 years by gangs and violence, now transformed under presidential courage. Politicians can indeed make a difference. We’re seeing similar shifts in the U.S.: more and more policymakers are beginning to understand Bitcoin’s importance to nations and the world.
One thing we’re proud of: we don’t just buy Bitcoin—we mine it ourselves. Yes, by year-end, we could become the world’s largest Bitcoin mining company—surpassing all publicly listed firms.
Many ask: You already hold so much Bitcoin, why mine? The answer: Bitcoin mining is our natural hedge. We aren’t just holders—we’re participants in network security. With our computing power, we protect the network.
We’re also advancing infrastructure—for example, launching the WDK (Wallet Development Kit) to help every company, app, website, and AI agent integrate non-custodial Bitcoin wallets. I don’t believe future AI agents should access custodial services via APIs. Instead, they should have independent wallets, be able to own assets, and perform tasks for humans—without being bound by any single company’s rules.
Recently, we launched our own AI platform—KUBA—inspired by Isaac Asimov’s 1956 short story “The Last Question.” The question we aim to answer is: “How do we reverse the entropy of the universe?” This platform emphasizes local inference and works on any device—from a $30 Android phone in Africa to high-performance servers. The AI we want to create is decentralized intelligence serving society, not a tool to extract user data for corporate profit.
We’ve invested in the Plan B Network, becoming its largest supporter. While “Plan B” has other connotations in the U.S. (laughter), we give it a new meaning: when Plan A fails, everyone should have their own Plan B—the ability to possess monetary sovereignty and communication sovereignty.
We also run the Tether Education Program, partnering with universities worldwide to promote Bitcoin education; invest in the open-source BTC Pay Server project to advance Bitcoin payment infrastructure; collaborate with the city of Lugano, Switzerland, to host the Plan B Summit, sponsoring the local football club and bringing the Bitcoin brand onto European pitches; and partner with Fulgur to establish a venture fund investing in Bitcoin startups.
We’ve partnered with video platform Rumble, investing $775 million; they too maintain their own Bitcoin treasury. We’ll soon launch a Bitcoin-first wallet product, making it easier for more people to get started.
Beyond that, we’ve developed a peer-to-peer communication app—Keet. It’s still in alpha testing, but already supports high-frequency peer-to-peer distribution of voice, text, video, and files—entirely without central servers. We aim to prove that “the cloud” is not our friend. It’s merely an imposed illusion designed to extract our data.
Finally, thank you all. I know I’ve spoken at length, but I feel profoundly honored to be here, in the U.S., sharing this journey with fellow believers. Together, let’s keep building Bitcoin’s future.
Thank you!
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
Odaily
