Cryptocurrency agency Tether plans to maneuver its headquarters to El Salvador, its CEO mentioned, because the founders of the world’s greatest stablecoin look to capitalise on the Central American nation’s bid to change into a hub for crypto buying and selling.
Tether has emerged as a dominant drive within the booming marketplace for stablecoins, that are designed to take care of a continuing worth by being pegged to conventional currencies and provide customers a technique to transfer cash between cryptocurrencies with out publicity to cost swings.
CEO Paolo Ardoino mentioned Tether would relocate to El Salvador after the cryptocurrency lately obtained a licence there as a digital asset service supplier. Ardoino and his fellow managers and co-founders of Tether can even transfer their residences to El Salvador, he mentioned. Beforehand, the corporate was included within the British Virgin Islands.
“This transfer to El Salvador would be the first time we’re going to have additionally a bodily headquarters,” he mentioned. However not the entire firm’s 100-plus staff will transfer there, he mentioned, including that lots of the workers work remotely. The corporate plans to rent 100 Salvadorans over the following a number of years, he mentioned.
The booming marketplace for stablecoins has anxious regulators involved that rising stablecoin reserves expose the broader monetary system to greater dangers, as a result of they act as a bridge between the crypto universe and mainstream monetary markets.
Tether has confronted questions round its reserves and doesn’t absolutely disclose the place they’re held or in what kind. The agency says the overwhelming majority of its stablecoin is backed by conventional foreign money reserves held with Wall Avenue brokerage Cantor Fitzgerald, whose CEO, Howard Lutnick, has been nominated to move the US commerce division underneath President-elect Donald Trump.
Digital foreign money hub
“So, we have now some liquidity in different banks, however the huge, overwhelming majority of the T-bills are in Cantor,” Ardoino mentioned.
The corporate mentioned final 12 months it was growing monitoring of how its tokens are used to fight illicit finance.
Requested whether or not Tether had thought of various areas for its headquarters, Ardoino mentioned it lacked a licence to function within the EU and had dominated out the US for now. It was “fairly untimely” to foretell doable adjustments that may be carried out underneath Trump, he mentioned.
Trump’s victory within the November US election sparked a file rise in cryptocurrency costs. The Republican has vowed to introduce a friendlier regulatory setting for crypto and mentioned he deliberate to create a US bitcoin strategic reserve.
El Salvador is in search of to change into a hub for digital foreign money buying and selling, and three years in the past President Nayib Bukele made it the primary nation to determine bitcoin as authorized tender, alongside the greenback.
“Welcome house,” Bukele wrote on social media platform X in response to Tether’s announcement. In a separate publish on Monday, Bukele requested the CEO of Rumble, Chris Pavlovski, to think about transferring the headquarters of the video-sharing platform to El Salvador. Days earlier, the corporate introduced a cloud providers settlement with Bukele’s authorities.
Learn: Why ethereum is underperforming as bitcoin booms
Tether’s eponymous dollar-pegged token (USDT) accounts for roughly two-thirds of the US$212-billion value of stablecoins in circulation, in line with CoinGecko knowledge. — Federico Maccioni, with Aida Pelaez-Fernandez, (c) 2025 Reuters
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