Bitcoin, the most beautiful currency in the world, and the most bullish development in the crypto ecosystem Bitcoin Spot ETF
“Bitcoin (BTC) is the most beautiful currency in the world,” said Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether (USDT), the world's largest dollar-pegged stablecoin issuer. Ardoino, who is also CTO of Bitfinex, made the remarks during an interview with CryptoPotato at the recent Token 2024 Dubai conference, where he discussed artificial intelligence (AI), Bitcoin's halving, the recently launched exchange-traded fund (ETF), USDT's market share, and more.
The Tether CEO said that the impact of the halving is diminishing over time because “more than 19.5 million BTC have already been mined, and the impact is less now than it was when production dropped from 50 BTC to 25 BTC.” He also noted that some people are anticipating the halving and preparing for it ahead of time, arguing that the halving is likely already priced in, given the fact that Bitcoin soared to all-time highs ahead of the halving.
However, Ardoino sees the spot ETF, which launched in the US in January of this year, as the most bullish development in the crypto ecosystem. “Even if just 1-2% of the funds managed by large traditional hedge funds and institutional investors flow into Bitcoin spot ETFs, the BTC price could rise significantly,” he said. And if spot ETFs in the U.S. bring people into the market who thought it was too difficult to invest in Bitcoin, and they start educating themselves on the real benefits of crypto, that could all change. However, holding Bitcoin in the way that people buy shares in spot ETFs is not the way Bitcoin maximalists prefer to hold Bitcoin, as it is held by a centralized institution.”
He also said that “Tether is not interested in DeFi. While it's clear that USDT is often used in DeFi, we don't see it as a primary use case for Tether. The real use case for Tether is to provide it to people in developing countries, emerging markets, and other places that want access to dollars but are marginalized by the traditional financial system.”
Finally, he talked about Tether's recent focus on investing in AI: “We are investing in AI projects using only the revenue we generate. We made $6 billion last year and allocated about 10% of that to various AI investments. The remaining $5.4 billion was used to strengthen our stablecoin reserves.”
