Lugano, Switzerland — Tether, the cryptocurrency company behind the world’s largest stablecoin USDT USDT$1.0001Tether is planning new investments to bring its US-focused USD stablecoin to its 100 million US user base, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said in an interview on Friday.
The USAT token is specifically designed for the US market to comply with federal regulations set by the requirements of the GENIUS Act and is expected to be launched in December of this year, Ardoino said. It is issued by Tether America, a joint venture between Tether and regulated US crypto bank Anchorage Digital.
A key element for Tether’s upcoming token distribution will be Rumble (RUM), the video-sharing platform in which Tether invested $775 million last year, and its next crypto wallet, also coming later this year. Ardoino said Rumble alone has 51 million monthly active users in the U.S., who could potentially earn USAT tokens.
“We are investing in two to three companies and the number will be between 51 million and 100 million,” he said.
Although he did not name specific companies, he said investments could include social media companies and content platforms similar to Rumble, as Tether aims to position USAT tokens for payments in the creator economy.
“In the U.S. market, we need to build a more professional and digital approach to money that can compete with the likes of PayPal,” he said. “The great thing is that there is already a user base that will leverage that money into the economy (…), so this service will be unbeatable.”
“We’re going to get serious and start taking market share from the competitors who tried to crush us in the first place,” Ardoino said.
Read more: Tether unveils USAT stablecoin for US market, names Beau Hines to lead new division
gold rush
Although primarily focused on emerging markets where access to dollars is still limited, Tether is benefiting from rapid stablecoin adoption, partially strengthened by regulatory advances such as the US GENIUS Act, which allows digital tokens to be further incorporated into global payments. The supply of USDT, the company’s flagship token, has increased to $182 billion, an increase of one-third since the beginning of the year and dominates an asset class of approximately $300 billion. Circle (CRCL) Token USDC$0.9998 is currently in second place with $72 billion, and has grown about 70% this year.
On the other hand, the company’s other token, a physical token backed by gold, Zout$4,125.89soared over the past few months as the yellow metal rose to new all-time highs. XAUT’s market size has increased to an all-time high of $2.2 billion, more than tripling since the beginning of the year.
Ardoino said this growth is largely driven by retail demand.
“Right now, we’re seeing retail in Latin America and Asia building up and learning about tokenized gold,” he said. The retail gold craze has led to increased use of tokenized gold by market makers, who can sell gold on the secondary market to increase spreads with their counterparty CME futures.
Nasdaq-listed company Prestige Wealth recently raised $150 million backed by Bitcoin BTC$110,433.33 Lender Antalfa has been hoarding Tether’s tokenized gold, which is also driving demand.
Read more: Tether unveils synthetic AI dataset to democratize STEM intelligence
