Stablecoin Drama: Tether Plots to Invade the US—Regulators Braced for Chaos!

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If there’s anything Discworld—and the rest of reality—has taught us, it’s that no situation is so stable it can’t be made wobbly by a good, old-fashioned influx of money. Enter Tether: led by CEO Paul Ardoino, who, despite an April 30 CNBC interview rather than popping out of a wizard’s hat, announced plans to unleash their stablecoin into the US with the subtlety of a hippopotamus on roller skates. ETA? Sometime before you can invent a new cryptocurrency called “OopsCoin.”

Now, Tether’s flagship, USDT, is already dubbed the top “exporter” of the mighty US dollar. Never mind that the dollar was already pretty good at exporting itself; apparently, it just needed a blockchain passport. With a market cap tipping towards $150 billion, it is now officially worth more than Ankh-Morpork’s Entire Patrician Cheese Reserve.

The idea, according to Ardoino, is to expand into the US market “by the end of this year or early next year, at the fastest.” Of course, this timeline depends entirely on US lawmakers, who are known for moving with the speed and decisiveness of the luggage in a bureaucratic swamp. 👞🐊

To make this journey less fraught with alligators, Tether’s strategy is to parade itself before US regulators, wagging its tail and insisting it collaborates with law enforcement (the REAL Watch). All the while, USDT is painted as the economic hero the US neither asked for nor consulted, but hey, who says you can’t show up to someone else’s birthday party and hand out your own cake?

“We are just exporters of what we believe to be the best product the United States ever created — that is, the US dollar,” proclaimed Ardoino, clearly forgetting that the US also made jazz, hamburgers, and very large pickup trucks.

Market leader

On April 25, USDT officially commanded about 66% of the stablecoin kingdom, according to the oracles at Web3 research mansion Nansen. That’s more than two-thirds—enough for a comfortable majority at any decent witch’s coven AGM.

Tether is also raking in profits at a speed you’d associate with runaway runaway carts, boasting nearly $14 billion in income for 2024. Where’s the gold coming from? They collect US dollars to mint USDT, then stash the loot into US Treasury bills—because what else would modern alchemy look like?

Of course, despite its popularity abroad, in the US, Tether is like a foreign cheese at a midwestern picnic: eyed suspiciously while the locals dig into their own, USDC-branded slices. Ardoino cheerfully admits that USDT was originally designed for “people that live in small villages in Africa… [or] a shop owner in Istanbul”—meaning the American version might come wearing bigger shoes and holding more paperwork.

USDC’s adoption, meanwhile, has accelerated faster than a Discworld clacks tower after a suspicious fire, especially post-Trump election victory. Now Circle’s shiny coin boasts over $60 billion, proving that in politics and stablecoins alike, the market never misses a public spectacle. 🪙🎩

Still, USDT is expected to keep its hat firmly on the “biggest stablecoin” head. As Nansen put it (possibly while stirring a cauldron): “Despite the potential dispersion in stables, we inevitably believe this is a ‘winner-takes-most’ market dynamic.” Translation: everybody is invited to the dance, but Tether is already doing the conga around the hall.

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2025-04-30 23:03