The controversy about Tether’s monetary power intensified after Arthur Hayes, co-founder of the BitMEX alternate, and Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, supplied their interpretations on the danger technique of the corporate issuing USDT, the most important stablecoin in the marketplace.
Hayes described what he referred to as a “large operation” primarily based on rates of interest. In keeping with Hayes, The corporate can be anticipating rate of interest cuts by the Federal Reserve (FED) of america, which might drastically scale back their earnings from Treasury bonds, the place they make investments most of their reserves.
For that reason, in accordance with Hayes, Tether is diversifying into property equivalent to gold and bitcoin (BTC) as a hedging technique, since these property have a tendency to understand when the price of cash falls. The issue, for Hayes, can be a large drop in bitcoin or the worth of gold, which might have an effect on the USDT collateral.
The BitMEX co-founder primarily based his argument on Tether’s most up-to-date audit, expressing that the corporate’s traders are within the early levels of a large money-yield-driven commerce.
That is the precise composition of the reserves backing every USDT in circulation on the finish of the third quarter of 2025, in accordance with the impartial certification made by BDO Italia and revealed by Tether on October 31, 2025.
Ardoino dismissed the evaluation as a worry marketing campaign, or FUD, and stated that $181.5 billion in reserves for his stablecoins supply a strong cushion.
The audit exhibits $9.856 billion in BTC and $12.92 billion in valuable metals in its holdings. The co-founder of BitMEX warned that a roughly 30% drop within the mixed worth of gold and BTC might wipe capital out of Tethermaking USDT, in concept, bancrupt and reviving doubts about its solvency, much like these expressed by the ranking company S&P World final week, as reported by CriptoNoticias.
This identical state of affairs—a sustained drop within the value of bitcoin—is the one case during which one other massive institutional BTC holder, Technique, has admitted that it might be compelled to liquidate a part of its holdings. Its CEO, Phong Le, acknowledged that they might solely promote bitcoin “if the MNAV (adjusted web worth per share) drops under 1 and the corporate runs out of financing choices.” In different phrases, Technique, the world’s largest company holder of bitcoin, is barely considering dumping its BTC in an occasion of maximum monetary stress.
The coincidence just isn’t minor. Each Tether and Technique have made bitcoin a key piece of their stability sheets in a excessive price atmosphere. Each are assured that the BTC value will stay steady or rise when financial coverage is eased. But when that thesis fails and bitcoin enters a chronic bear market—simply the state of affairs that Hayes proposes for Tether—the promoting strain might come not solely from retail merchants, but in addition from two of the most important institutional holders within the ecosystem.
For his half, Ardoino detailed that, on the finish of the third quarter of 2025, Tether had 7 billion in extra capital, along with the 181 billion reserves, including one other 23 billion in retained earnings as a part of the capital.
The businessman criticized that each Hayes and S&P World make the error of not contemplating this extra capital of the Group nor the $500 million in month-to-month base earnings generated solely by US Treasury yields, suggesting that sure analyzes have the inducement to strain competitors.
