Tether CEO Bitcoin Conference Speech Full Text: We Are Not a Money Printing Machine, We Are a Trust Minimized Infrastructure Provider

Original Article by: Ethan, Odaily Planet Daily

Translator's Note: At the Bitcoin 2025 Conference, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino's speech may not have been as "data bombarding" or "conceptually soaring" as traditional Web3 executives, but it was unexpectedly authentic, vivid, and even a bit darkly humorous. He likened Bitcoin to a childhood idol "Goku," referred to gold as the "Bitcoin of nature," made jokes about API keys, emphasized the beauty of peer-to-peer architecture, and casually mentioned, "We are one of the world's largest Bitcoin miners." This keynote speech by Paolo Ardoino, rather than being a typical company roadshow, felt more like an expression of technical faith—Tether is attempting to expand the boundaries of stablecoins into a trustless infrastructure system, including currency (USDT), value anchoring (BTC), communication (Keet), a smart platform (KUBA), and even methods of identity and sovereignty construction. Finally, quoting one of his statements to wrap it all up: "The cloud is not our friend. Bitcoin is."

Note: In translating this speech, we have endeavored to preserve its first-person perspective and native tone while making appropriate refinements and adjustments to certain sentences based on the English original manuscript.

Below is the full text of Paolo Ardoino's speech:

Supporting Bitcoin is truly an exciting thing. I love it very much. Please pay close attention.

For today's speech, I want to start from this image. This is my favorite picture. It captures my feelings about Bitcoin: Bitcoin is like Goku. I was born in the 80s, and "Dragon Ball" is part of my childhood memories, with Bitcoin being that powerful companion. Tether, on the other hand, is like another friend on the journey—not as powerful, but always reliable and significant.

Tether, as a company, started from nothing in 2014 and created the world's first stablecoin—USDT. We have always been working hard to create products that people truly need. Just now, I updated a slide with data because this morning, our asset size just exceeded $153 billion. This was progress we did not anticipate when we prepared the slides two days ago.

I want to share a poignant moment for me, which was when the pandemic hit. Until then, Tether was mainly used as a medium for cryptocurrency trading. However, since the pandemic began, it rapidly transformed into a "digital dollar" used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide, becoming a part of their lives.

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

Some data points that may interest everyone: last year we achieved a profit of $13 billion. Currently, we hold over $120 billion in U.S. Treasury Bonds. Additionally, we have also started heavily investing in Bitcoin. As a company, we now own over 100,000 bitcoins.

We also hold about 50 tons of gold. Yes, I know many Bitcoin supporters don't really like gold, and are even unwilling to talk about it, as if gold would threaten Bitcoin's status. But I don't think so. Bitcoin is perfect, while gold is imperfect; it does not compete with Bitcoin but with fiat.

Personally, I consider gold to be almost like "primitive Bitcoin" in nature. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is the "digital gold" we have created. We have around 420 million users in emerging markets and developing countries globally, accounting for 62% of centralized exchange volume. Even more significantly, about 35% of USDT users use it as a savings account—because they live in countries like Turkey, Argentina, Vietnam, where the local currency depreciates at an astounding rate, they can only choose to save in dollars, and USDT is their most realistic choice.

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 us fees for every transaction, while big tech giants control our data. This fundamentally is the same thing: we have lost sovereignty over both money and data.

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

We are a company born from Bitcoin. Everyone in the company loves Bitcoin. Our headquarters are situated in the country of Bitcoin—El Salvador. This country has endured 20 years of gang violence and turmoil, and now, under the courageous leadership of the president, has undergone a transformation. Politicians can really make a difference, and we are seeing a similar transformation in the U.S.: more and more political figures are starting to understand the importance of Bitcoin to the nation and to the world. One thing we are proud of is that we not only purchase Bitcoin but also engage in mining ourselves. Yes, by the end of this year, we may become the world's largest Bitcoin mining enterprise—surpassing all publicly traded companies.

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

We are also driving infrastructure development, such as launching WDK (Wallet Development Kit), helping every company, application, website, and AI Agent access non-custodial Bitcoin wallets. I don’t believe that future AI Agents should access custodial services via APIs, but should have their own independent wallets, be able to hold assets, perform tasks for humans, and not be constrained by any company's rules.

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

We have also invested in the Plan B Network, being its biggest supporter. Although "Plan B" has a different meaning in the United States (lol), we give it a whole new meaning: when Plan A fails, everyone should have their own Plan B—the ability to have monetary sovereignty and communication technology sovereignty.

We also collaborate with global universities through the Tether Education Program to promote Bitcoin education; invest in the BTC Pay Server open-source project to drive Bitcoin payment infrastructure; collaborate with the city of Lugano, Switzerland, to organize the Plan B Summit and sponsor a local football club, bringing the Bitcoin brand to European stadiums; we have teamed up with Fulgur to create a venture capital fund to invest in Bitcoin startups. We partnered with the video platform Rumble, investing $775 million, who also have their own Bitcoin treasury. We will launch a Bitcoin-based wallet product to make it easier for more people to get started.

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

Finally, thank you all very much. I know I spoke for a bit too long, but being here, in the United States, sharing this content with all of you, I feel incredibly honored. Together, we strive for the future of Bitcoin. Thank you all!

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