LUGANO, Switzerland – Tether, the crypto company behind the world’s largest stablecoin, USDT is planning new investments to bring its US-focused US dollar stablecoin to a base of 100 million US users, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said in an interview on Friday.
The USAT token, designed specifically for the US market to comply with federal regulations set by the GENIUS Act requirements, will launch in December, Ardoino said. It is issued by Tether America, a joint venture between Tether and US regulated crypto bank Anchorage Digital.
A key element for Tether to distribute the next token is Rumble (RUM), the video-sharing platform that Tether invested $775 million in last year, and its upcoming crypto wallet, which is also due out later this year. Rumble alone has 51 million monthly active users in the US who can potentially be onboarded to USAT tokens, Ardoino said.
“We are investing in two or three companies that would take that figure from 51 million to 100 million,” he stated.
Without naming specific companies, he said investment targets may include social media companies and content platforms similar to Rumble, as Tether aims to position its USAT token for payments in the creator economy.
“For the US market, there is a need to create a more professional and digital approach to money that can compete with PayPal and others,” he said. “The good thing is that we already have a user base that would use that money in the economy. […] so the offer will be unbeatable.”
“We are going to start working and we are going to start taking market share from our competitors who were the ones who tried to kill us in the first place,” Ardoino said.
Read More: Tether Unveils USAT Stablecoin for US Market and Appoints Bo Hines to Lead New Division
gold rush
Tether, while still primarily focused on emerging markets where access to the dollar is limited, has benefited from the rapid adoption of stablecoins, partly driven by regulatory advances such as the US GENIUS Act, which allows digital tokens to be more integrated into global payments. The company’s flagship token, USDT, rose to a supply of $182 billion, rising by a third since the beginning of the year and dominating the roughly $300 billion asset class. Circle Token (CRCL) It currently ranks second with $72 billion, a growth of around 70% this year.
Meanwhile, the company’s other token, the gold-backed physical token. It also rose in recent months as the yellow metal hit new all-time highs. The XAUT market size rose to a record $2.2 billion, more than tripling since the beginning of the year.
That growth comes largely from retail demand, Ardoino said.
“We see retail in Central and South America and Asia piling on now, starting to learn about tokenized gold,” he said. Due to the retail frenzy for gold, market makers also increasingly turned to tokenized gold as they could sell it on secondary markets for a larger spread to CME futures on the other side of the trade.
Nasdaq-listed Prestige Wealth recently raised $150 million, backed by bitcoin lender Antalpha, to hoard Tether’s tokenized gold, which also increases demand.
Read more: Tether unveils synthetic AI dataset to democratize STEM intelligence
