Why Stablecoins Change Everything: Paolo Ardoino on Tether’s Mission, Financial Access in a Fractured World, and What Comes Next

In this episode of When Shift Happens, I sit down with Paolo Ardoino to discuss how Tether became one of the most profitable businesses per employee in history, why stablecoins matter most to people outside the West, and what it means to build a “stable company” in an unstable world.

Ardoino, CEO of Tether and CTO of Bitfinex, is matter-of-fact about the numbers. Tether earned $13.7 billion last year and expects similar performance this year. Some of that windfall reflects macro tailwinds such as higher interest rates since 2022, but the larger story is operational discipline: a lean core team running USDT at scale, then reinvesting the majority of profits into technology, infrastructure, and long-term bets.

“It’s not about the money, it’s about sending a message,” he says. The message being that Tether’s mission is “100-fold” bigger than where it is today.

A “Stable Company” in Unstable Times

Ardoino introduces a phrase that anchors the entire conversation: Tether is not only a stablecoin company; it is a stable company. The distinction matters. In his view, social and political instability often traces back to financial exclusion and widening disparities in access to tools, capital, and opportunity. Technology was supposed to close the gap, but inadvertently widened it. Now, USDT’s role is simple but profound: provide a borderless, dollar-denominated instrument that ordinary people can actually use.

Stablecoins, he argues, have marginal value in the West where financial rails are already “90% efficient”. In emerging markets, however, moving from a 5% reliability baseline to 60–70% via stablecoins can be life-changing. As he puts it, money is the “ultimate social network” because it enables real, peer-to-peer interaction that carries value as well as information. When finance becomes accessible, communities gain stability; when stability grows, incentives for chaos decline. That is the purpose of a “stable company”.

Profit as Fuel, Not Finish Line

Tether’s profits are notable, but Ardoino insists they are a means to an end. He claims roughly 95% of profits remain in the business or are channeled into new initiatives across open telecommunications, social infrastructure, energy, and other hard problems. He describes a three-part framework for enduring companies: philosophy (ethos), innovation (ability to build), and capital (the fuel to execute without mission-drift). Many firms have one or two. Tether, he argues, now has all three.

This is why he floats the idea of raising $20 billion at a $500 billion valuation. The point, he says, is not to accumulate cash but to broadcast ambition and attract partners capable of building toward a century-scale vision. “It’s not about the money, it’s about sending a message,” he repeats, quoting the Joker. 

Early Spark, Lasting Discipline

The personal backstory is charming in its ordinariness. Ardoino grew up in Italy, in a family that prized work, pride in craft, and quiet routine. He recalls grandparents who rose at dawn to tend a small farm, chasing perfection in tomatoes and olive oil. That ethic imprinted deeply: “Everyone should have a mission,” he says. His father, who was an employee at the national energy company, brought home an early computer when Paolo was seven. Money was tight, but when he ran out of games, his father saved some more so he could learn to code and make his own. That habit of building never stopped.

Neither did the regimen. He still runs Bitfinex, which means sleeping about five hours a night, interrupted by hourly notification checks. It sounds brutal, but he considers it as a responsibility. Exchanges do not sleep, and neither, much of the time, does he.

Why Stablecoins, Explained Simply

Ardoino’s plain-English definition of a stablecoin is: it is the digital money you already have in a bank account, but issued on a decentralized, borderless database rather than locked inside a single institution’s servers. 

Dollars that move at internet speed, with programmable settlement and global reach, unlock participation for people who cannot open a bank account or trust a local currency. He points to transaction data suggesting most USDT users move only USDT, not a basket of speculative tokens. That is a clear sign, he says, that they use it as money, not as a trading chip.

An Efficiency Moat and the Per-Employee Puzzle

Tether’s startling profit per employee, roughly $100 million, by his tally, comes from ruthless efficiency in the core business, then targeted expansion into adjacent areas. He notes that until two years ago, Tether’s headcount was around 40, but the firm has since scaled developer hiring to pursue AI and product initiatives, yet still runs the stablecoin with a small, senior team. Macro factors helped, like the post-pandemic rate regime, but strategy matters more: keep the money engine simple and defensible, and spend surplus on building the rails you wish already existed.

Building for Real Users

Ardoino is openly critical of parts of the blockchain industry that chase “dogs with hats” and short-term hype. He wants infrastructure that lowers fees, removes frictions like needing ETH to move USDT on Ethereum, and meets everyday users where they are. That is why Tether invests in projects like Plasma: to push towards chains and standards optimized for stablecoins and mainstream usability, not niche speculation. He would rather serve “tens of millions of people living in Africa” than “10,000 bankers in New York”.

Football as Distribution: The Juventus Bet

The most surprising investment is a 10% stake in Juventus Football Club. Though he is a fan, Ardoino frames the choice as distribution and modernization. Football clubs are global brands with hundreds of millions of fans. By helping Juventus update how it engages and monetizes its fanbase, Tether hopes to demonstrate a template for reaching ordinary people, rich or poor, at massive scale, and to show that Italian football can think internationally again.

The Builder’s Path

Through his various expressions, coding for creative world building, sleeping in one-hour bursts, the farmer’s pride in perfect basil or rosemary, one theme repeats: build, then keep building. “I don’t have hobbies. I’m a guy that gets obsessed,”. He calls Tether a “once in a century company,” not as a boast, he insists, but because its incentives align unusually well with openness, decentralisation, and growth. The more people who can freely move value and communicate, the stronger Tether becomes. In a world where most firms profit from keeping others locked in their protocols, he wants the opposite.

By the end, you can sense why he keeps that phone pinging every hour. If your north star is stability for people who have the least of it, uptime is a promise. And promises, in Paolo Ardoino’s world, are kept by building.

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