At the center stage of the 2025 Bitcoin Conference, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino stands in front of an image of Wukong and says, “Bitcoin is my Wukong, it is our friend.”

This seemingly emotional expression is, in fact, a reflection of Tether’s strategic core. As the issuer of the world’s largest stablecoin USDT, Tether is embedding itself in multiple layers of the Bitcoin ecosystem in a builder’s posture, from reserve asset allocation to mining operations, from ecological investments to infrastructure development, Tether is delving into the neural center of the new global financial order.

Due to Tether’s deep penetration in the Bitcoin ecosystem, its actions have sparked an increasing number of conspiracy theories and heated discussions abroad, questioning whether it artificially drives up Bitcoin prices by continuously issuing USDT, creating a “closed-loop bubble” that circulates among Bitcoin reserves, gold support, and USDT issuance.

Establishing a Bitcoin reserve strategy, referred to as the only major buyer.

Since May 2023, Tether has announced that it will regularly allocate up to 15% of its realized net operating profit for the purchase of Bitcoin. Tether expects that the current and future holdings of Bitcoin in its reserves will not exceed the shareholder capital buffer, and will further strengthen and diversify its reserves. As of the first quarter of 2025, Tether holds Bitcoin worth approximately $7.66 billion, a significant increase from the previous quarter.

The “Gold + Bitcoin” dual-reserve mechanism is Tether’s hedging combination against the risks of sovereign fiat currency, which has brought substantial financial returns. Ardoino recently disclosed that Tether currently holds over 100,000 Bitcoins and over 50 tons of gold. In 2024 alone, Tether’s net profit reached $13.7 billion, with investments in gold and Bitcoin contributing approximately $5 billion in profit. Ardoino has stated that they hold gold not to challenge Bitcoin, but to challenge the centralized fiat currency system.

However, Jacob King, the founder of WhaleWire, pointed out that “relying on continuous money printing and taking over, Tether is the only big buyer in the entire Bitcoin market. It proves its legitimacy by selling excess Bitcoin after raising the price of Bitcoin through newly printed USDT and purchasing USD and gold as reserves.” He referred to this model as the “ultimate house of cards,” and once stablecoins face regulation or Bitcoin demand wanes, the entire system may become unbalanced.

Tether’s ambitions for Bitcoin go far beyond merely holding coins. In April of this year, Tether, in collaboration with SoftBank and Cantor, initiated the establishment of a crypto investment joint venture called Twenty One Capital, aimed at creating a global platform for the acquisition and management of Bitcoin assets, with a total scale of up to $3 billion. This platform is viewed by the industry as Tether’s structural layout to compete with MicroStrategy. In this joint venture deal, Tether holds 42.8% of the equity and 51.7% of the voting rights, effectively having the dominant position. Cantor, on the other hand, holds a 5% stake in Tether, and its CEO Brandon Lutnick is the son of U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick.

“Jack Mallers (CEO of Twenty One Capital) has a close relationship with Tether and Bitfinex, and his other company Strike has long had a close relationship with Tether. They claim there is significant market demand, but most of the Bitcoin in their reserves comes directly from Tether. This is a ‘shell operation’ in a larger liquidity trick.” Jacob King stated on social media that if stablecoins face regulation in the U.S. in the future, Tether will find it difficult to continue injecting liquidity, and the recent months have seen significant net outflows of funds from Bitcoin spot ETFs, indicating that institutions are rapidly withdrawing.

On-chain data shows that Twenty One Capital’s Bitcoin reserves come from Tether, which recently injected over 37,000 BTC through five transactions, worth nearly $4 billion.

Tether has invested over $770 million in the video platform Rumble, which has also established its own Bitcoin treasury, claiming that Bitcoin has the potential to serve as an inflation hedge.

Building self-owned mining farms alongside strategic investments, planning to become one of the largest miners in the world.

Tether’s ambitions go far beyond asset reserves. As early as 2023, Tether launched a renewable energy-driven Bitcoin mining project in Uruguay, leveraging the local abundant clean energy resources (such as hydropower and wind energy) to create an efficient and sustainable mining base. Shortly after, it participated in El Salvador’s volcanic energy plan, becoming a capital force driving one of the world’s largest geothermal Bitcoin mining sites. After that, Tether continued to expand the energy map in Latin America, with cumulative investments reaching 500 million USD in Uruguay, Paraguay, and El Salvador, building vertically integrated mining bases.

“The so-called Bitcoin investment by El Salvador is actually a carefully crafted illusion. The Bitcoins in its treasury were transferred directly from Bitfinex and Tether. Tether even personally drafted all of El Salvador’s Bitcoin legislation. However, many people have not noticed that El Salvador has quietly abandoned the promotion of Bitcoin as legal tender. Tether and its internal network cannot support all of this because there is no real market demand. Some of Jacob King’s statements lack clear evidence, but in February of this year, El Salvador did officially cancel Bitcoin’s status as legal tender through the Bitcoin legislation, and merchants and institutions are no longer required to accept Bitcoin, nor can it be used for tax payments. Polls show that the vast majority of the public did not benefit, and the economic situation has not improved.

In addition to building its own mines, Tether is also actively expanding its global mining footprint through investments and acquisitions. So far, it has invested in companies such as Bitdeer, Northern Data Group, Blockstream, and Swan Mining, covering areas including chip procurement, server manufacturing, data center construction, and enterprise-level computing power hosting, becoming a crucial lever supporting Tether’s Bitcoin mining layout.

This year, Tether has taken a further step by announcing the deployment of its computing power to the OCEAN mining pool, advancing the construction of decentralized Bitcoin mining infrastructure. At the same time, Tether recently announced plans to open source its Bitcoin mining software, which will allow new miners to enter the market without relying on expensive third-party vendors.

According to Ardoino’s disclosure at the Bitcoin 2025 conference, Tether has invested over $2 billion in the energy and infrastructure sector, with actual investments in Bitcoin mining being even higher. It is expected that by the end of this year, Tether will become the largest Bitcoin miner in the world, a prediction that includes all listed companies.

From the issuance on the Bitcoin chain to the full-stack layout of cultural penetration.

Tether is advancing its full-stack strategic layout, continuously expanding the boundaries and influence of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

For example, on the technical side, in addition to chains like Ethereum and TRON, Tether issues USDT to Bitcoin-based protocols through Omni, Liquid, Lightning, RGB, etc., and the popular Bitcoin sidechain network Plasma is expected to natively support USDT; in terms of wallet tools, Tether AI has launched a self-custody wallet WDK that natively supports Bitcoin and USDT, allowing enterprises, applications, websites, and even AI Agents to connect, thereby further lowering the threshold for Bitcoin financial infrastructure; in the payment ecosystem, Tether has donated to the open-source project BTC Pay Server to support the ongoing development and optimization of its open-source crypto payment processor.

In terms of culture and education, Tether co-hosted the Plan B Summit with the city of Lugano, Switzerland, sponsoring local football clubs to introduce the brand image of Bitcoin into the European stadium culture; at the same time, leveraging the Tether education program, it has established partnerships with multiple universities around the world to promote the dissemination of Bitcoin knowledge and nurture the next generation of crypto natives. Twenty One Capital will also focus on the dissemination of Bitcoin-related knowledge in the future, creating educational content and video media, as well as developing a series of financial and consulting services related to Bitcoin.

“For me, the most important thing is that I can contribute to building a more accessible, more resilient, and more useful Bitcoin ecosystem. If I can play a role in infrastructure, technology, and education, that would be enough. The story of Bitcoin has never been about one person, but about the global community’s dedication to an idea—steadfastly building the future, even in the lows, even when misunderstood. If I can play a role in helping more people join the ecosystem, empowering them with sovereignty and security tools, that would be a mission worth remembering.” Ardoino stated in a recent interview with Bitcoin News.

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