Tether CEO Bitcoin Conference Speech Full Text: We are not a money printer, we are an intermediary infrastructure provider.

Speech: Paolo Ardoino

Compiled by: Ethan, Odaily Planet Daily

Translator's note: Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino's speech at Bitcoin 2025 may not have been as "data-bombarded" or "concept-crazy" as traditional Web3 executives, but it was surprisingly real, vivid, and even a little bit of black humor. He likened Bitcoin to his childhood idol "Wukong", called gold "Nature's Bitcoin", and emphasized the aesthetics of the peer-to-peer architecture while complaining about the API key, and casually threw out the phrase: "We are one of the largest Bitcoin miners in the world." Paolo Ardoino's keynote was more of an expression of technical belief than a company roadshow – Tether is trying to broaden the boundaries of stablecoins into a system of disintermediated infrastructure, including currency (USDT), value peg (BTC), communication (Keet), intelligent platform (KUBA), and even how identity and sovereignty are constructed.

Finally, it couldn't be more appropriate to conclude with his quote: "The cloud is not our friend. Bitcoin is."

Note: In translating this speech, we made every effort to preserve its first-person perspective and native linguistic feel, while also making appropriate refinements and adjustments to certain statements based on the English manuscript.

The following is the full text of Paolo Ardoino's speech:

Supporting Bitcoin is truly an exciting thing. I really like it. Please pay more attention, everyone.

In today's speech, I want to start with this picture. This is one of my favorite images. It shows my feelings about Bitcoin: Bitcoin is like Wukong. I was born in the 1980s, and "Dragon Ball" is a part of my childhood memories, while Bitcoin is that powerful companion. And Tether is like another friend on the journey - its power may not be as strong, but it is always reliable and important.

Tether started from scratch in 2014 and created the world's first stablecoin - USDT. We have been working hard to create products that people truly need. Just now, I updated a slide with data because this morning, our asset scale just surpassed 153 billion dollars. This was an unexpected progress that we did not anticipate when preparing the slides two days ago.

I want to talk about a moment that moved me deeply, which was when the pandemic began. Before that, Tether was mainly used as a medium for cryptocurrency trading. But since the pandemic started, it quickly transformed into a "digital dollar" used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide, becoming a part of their lives.

More importantly, since 2022, we haven't even had a formal marketing team. So I can't say this growth was achieved through "good operations" or "smart advertising." The fact is: when you create a product that people truly need, it will naturally grow and spread through word of mouth.

Some data that you might be interested in: Last year we achieved a profit of 13 billion dollars. Currently, we hold over 120 billion dollars in U.S. Treasury bonds. In addition, we have also started to invest heavily in Bitcoin. As a company, we already own over 100,000 Bitcoins.

We also hold about 50 tonnes of gold. Yes, I know that a lot of Bitcoin supporters don't like gold very much and don't even want to talk about it, as if gold would threaten Bitcoin's position. But I don't think so. Bitcoin is perfect, while gold is imperfect, it doesn't compete with Bitcoin, it competes with fiat currencies.

I personally think that gold can almost be regarded as the "primitive Bitcoin" in nature. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is our created "digital gold." We have about 420 million users in emerging markets and developing countries, accounting for 62% of decentralized trading volume. More significantly, about 35% of USDT users use it as a savings account—because they live in countries like Turkey, Argentina, and Vietnam, where the local currency depreciates at an astonishing rate, and they can only choose to save in US dollars, with USDT being their most practical option.

How do I view Tether? I think it is a company that stands in stark contrast to traditional tech companies and financial institutions. Financial and big tech companies often rely on layers of intermediaries: financial intermediaries charge fees on every transaction we make, while tech giants control our data. Essentially, this is the same thing: we have lost sovereignty over both money and data.

Tether's goal is to provide tools through technology to help people break free from these intermediaries and achieve true individual sovereignty.

We are a company born out of Bitcoin. Everyone in the company loves Bitcoin. We are based in El Salvador, the land of Bitcoin. After 20 years of gangsterism and violence, the country has been transformed under the courageous leadership of the president. Politicians can really make a difference, and we're seeing a similar shift in the United States: more and more politicians are starting to understand the importance of Bitcoin to the country, to the world.

One thing we are proud of is that we not only buy Bitcoin but also participate in mining ourselves. Yes, by the end of this year, we may become the largest Bitcoin mining company in the world—surpassing all publicly traded companies.

Many people will ask: you already hold so much Bitcoin, why still mine? The answer is: Bitcoin mining is a hedge for our own assets. We are not only holders of Bitcoin, but also participants in network security. We use our own computing power to protect the security of this network.

We are also promoting infrastructure development, such as the launch of WDK (Wallet Development Kit), which helps every company, application, website, and AI Agent to access non-custodial Bitcoin wallets. I do not believe that future AI Agents should access custodial services through APIs, but rather should have their own independent wallets that can be endowed with assets and perform tasks for humans, rather than being restricted by the rules of a particular company.

Recently we launched our own AI platform - KUBA, inspired by Asimov's 1956 short story "The Last Question." The question we aim to answer is: "How can we reverse the entropy of the universe?" This platform focuses on local reasoning and is compatible with any device: from a $30 Android phone in Africa to high-performance servers, all are supported. The AI we hope to create is decentralized, serving society, rather than a tool for extracting user data and profiting enterprises.

We also invested in the Plan B network and are its largest supporter. Although "Plan B" has a different meaning in the United States (laughs), we give it a new connotation: when Plan A fails, everyone should have their own Plan B - the ability to have monetary sovereignty and communication technology sovereignty.

We're also partnering with universities around the world through our Tether education program to democratize Bitcoin education; Invest in the BTC Pay Server open-source project to promote the Bitcoin payment infrastructure; Partnered with the Swiss city of Lugano to host the Plan B Summit and sponsor a local football club to bring the Bitcoin brand to European stadiums; We've also teamed up with Fulgur to create a venture capital fund that invests in Bitcoin startups.

We partnered with video platform Rumble and invested $775 million, and they also have their own Bitcoin vault. We will launch a wallet product with Bitcoin at its core, making it easy for more people to get started.

In addition, we have developed a peer-to-peer communication application called Keet. It is still in the alpha testing phase, but it already supports peer-to-peer distribution of high-frequency voice, text, video, files, and other content, all without a central server. We want to prove that the "cloud" is not our friend; it is merely an illusion imposed on us, used as a tool to extract our data.

Finally, thank you very much everyone. I know I talked a bit long, but I feel incredibly honored to be here, in the United States, sharing this content with all of you colleagues. Together, we strive for the future of Bitcoin.

Thank you, everyone!