The cloud is not our friend. Bitcoin is.
Compiled by:Ethan, Odaily Planet Daily
Cover:Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash
Translator's Note: At the Bitcoin 2025 Conference, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino's speech was unexpectedly authentic, vivid, and even darkly humorous. He compared Bitcoin to his childhood idol "Goku", referred to gold as the "Bitcoin of nature", and while poking fun at API keys, emphasized the aesthetics of peer-to-peer architecture, casually dropping the line: "We are one of the largest Bitcoin miners globally." This keynote by Paolo Ardoino was less of a corporate roadshow and more an expression of technological faith - Tether is attempting to expand the boundaries of stablecoins into a disintermediated infrastructure system, including currency (USDT), value anchoring (BTC), communication (Keet), smart platforms (KUBA), and even methods of constructing identity and sovereignty.
Ending with his quote could not be more appropriate: "The cloud is not our friend. Bitcoin is."
Note: While translating this speech, we strived to preserve its first-person perspective and original language feel, while referencing the English original manuscript to appropriately polish and adjust certain sentences.
Below is the full speech by Paolo Ardoino:
Supporting Bitcoin is truly exciting. I really like it. Please pay more attention.
For today's speech, I want to start with this image. It's my favorite picture. It shows my feelings about Bitcoin: Bitcoin is like Goku. I was born in the 80s, and Dragon Ball was part of my childhood memories, and Bitcoin is that powerful companion. Tether, on the other hand, is like another friend on the journey - perhaps not as strong, but always reliable and important.
Tether started from nothing in 2014, creating the world's first stablecoin - USDT. We've been working hard to create products people truly need. Just now, I updated a slide because this morning, our asset scale just broke through $153 billion. This was an advancement we didn't anticipate when preparing the slides two days ago.
I want to talk about a moment that touched me deeply, which was when the pandemic occurred. Before that, Tether was mainly used as a medium for cryptocurrency trading. But from the pandemic's start, it quickly transformed into a "digital dollar" used by hundreds of millions of people globally, becoming part of their lives.
More importantly, from 2022 onwards, we didn't even have an official marketing team. So I can't say this growth was achieved through "good operations" or "clever advertising placement". The fact is: when you create a product people truly need, it will naturally grow and spread through word of mouth.
Some data might interest you: Last year we achieved a profit of $13 billion. Currently, we hold over $120 billion in US Treasury bonds. Additionally, we have begun massive investments in Bitcoin. As a company, we already own over 100,000 Bitcoins.
We also hold about 50 tons of gold. Yes, I know many Bitcoin supporters don't really like gold, and are even reluctant to discuss it, as if gold would threaten Bitcoin's status. But I don't think so. Bitcoin is perfect, while gold is imperfect; it's not competing with Bitcoin, but competing with fiat currency.
Personally, I think gold can almost be seen as the "primitive Bitcoin" of the natural world. And Bitcoin is the "digital gold" we've created. We have about 420 million users in global emerging markets and developing countries, accounting for 62% of decentralized trading volume. More meaningfully, about 35% of USDT users use it as a savings account - because they live in countries like Turkey, Argentina, and Vietnam, where local currencies depreciate at an astonishing rate, and they can only choose to save in dollars, with USDT being their most realistic option.
How do I view Tether? I believe it is a company that stands in stark contrast to traditional tech and financial institutions. Financial and big tech companies often rely on layers of intermediaries: financial intermediaries charge fees for each of our transactions, while tech giants control our data. Essentially, this is the same thing: we lose sovereignty over both our money and data.
Tether's goal is to provide tools through technology to help people break free from these intermediaries and achieve true individual sovereignty.
We are a company born from Bitcoin. Everyone in the company loves Bitcoin. Our headquarters is located in El Salvador, the country of Bitcoin. This country, which suffered from gang violence and conflict for 20 years, has now transformed under the courageous leadership of its president. Politicians can truly make a difference, and we are seeing similar changes in the United States: more and more political figures are beginning to understand the importance of Bitcoin for the nation and the world.
One thing we are proud of is that we not only purchase Bitcoin but also participate in mining ourselves. Yes, by the end of this year, we may become the world's largest Bitcoin mining enterprise - surpassing all listed companies.
Many people ask: You already hold so much Bitcoin, why continue mining? The answer is: Bitcoin mining is a hedging method for our own assets. We are not just Bitcoin holders, but also participants in network security. We protect this network's security with our own computing power.
We are also promoting infrastructure development, such as launching WDK (Wallet Development Kit), helping every company, application, website, and AI Agent integrate non-custodial Bitcoin wallets. I do not believe future AI Agents should access custodial services through APIs, but should have their own independent wallets, be empowered with assets, execute tasks for humans, and not be restricted by a company's rules.
Recently, we launched our AI platform - KUBA, inspired by Asimov's 1956 short story "The Last Question". The question we want to answer is: "How to reverse the entropy of the universe?" This platform focuses on local inference, compatible with any device: from a $30 Android phone in Africa to high-performance servers, all are supported. We hope to create AI that is decentralized and serves society, not a tool for extracting user data and profiting corporations.
We have also invested in the Plan B network, being its largest supporter. Although "Plan B" has a different meaning in the US (laughs), we give it a new connotation: when Plan A fails, everyone should have their own Plan B - the ability to have monetary sovereignty and communication technology sovereignty.
We collaborate with global universities through the Tether Education Program to popularize Bitcoin education; invest in the BTC Pay Server open-source project to promote Bitcoin payment infrastructure; partner with Lugano, Switzerland to host the Plan B Summit and sponsor the local football club, bringing the Bitcoin brand to European football fields; we also created a venture capital fund with Fulgur to invest in Bitcoin startups.
We partnered with video platform Rumble, investing $775 million, and they also have their own Bitcoin treasury. We will launch a wallet product centered on Bitcoin to make it easier for more people to get started.
Additionally, we developed a peer-to-peer communication application - Keet. Currently in alpha testing, it already supports peer-to-peer distribution of high-frequency voice, text, video, and file content, with no central server throughout. We want to prove that the "cloud" is not our friend; it's just an illusion imposed on us, a tool to extract our data.
Finally, thank you all. I know I've spoken for a while, but I feel incredibly honored to share these insights here, in the United States, with fellow peers. Together, we strive for Bitcoin's future.
Thank you!
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