Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Azuma (@azuma_eth)
The absolute leader in the stablecoin track, Tether, has been making frequent moves recently, not only in cryptocurrency vertical fields such as mining, exchanges, and Layer1/Layer2, but also actively deploying in industries like AI, brain-computer interfaces, agriculture, and sports.
Although in the past few years, Tether's business tentacles were not limited to the stablecoin sector, its recent deployment pace has clearly accelerated. The reason is that with the gradual advancement of the GENIUS Act, stablecoins are gradually integrating into the mainstream financial market in a compliant manner. However, due to Tether and USDT's difficulty in meeting the Act's requirements for issuer registration, reserve asset types, and audit standards, its market position will inevitably be impacted in the subsequent compliance process. In this context, Tether seems to have some anxiety, and its recent multi-directional accelerated deployment may be Tether's attempt to break through.
Under the Compliance Trend, Tether Faces Challenges
Earlier this month, the highly anticipated stablecoin regulatory bill (the GENIUS Act) has officially passed the final Senate vote and been submitted to the House of Representatives for review.
The GENIUS Act was first proposed in February by U.S. Senators Bill Hagerty, Tim Scott, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Cynthia Lummis, aiming to establish a legal framework for legally using stablecoins for payment within the United States.
The core provisions of the bill are as follows:
Definition of Payment Stablecoins: Digital assets pegged to a fixed currency value, fully backed by U.S. dollars or other highly liquid assets at a 1:1 ratio, specifically for payment settlement scenarios.
Dual Licensing Regulation: Federal regulation for issuers with a market cap over $10 billion; state-level regulation allows small issuers to choose state registration (must meet federal equivalent standards).
100% Reserve Requirement: Reserve assets limited to cash, short-term U.S. Treasury bonds, or central bank deposits, and must be isolated from operating funds. Monthly proof of reserve adequacy is required to ensure users can redeem at face value.
Mandatory Transparency Disclosure: Regularly disclose reserve composition and redemption policies, subject to compliance audit by registered accounting firms.
Anti-Money Laundering Compliance: Issuers will be subject to the Bank Secrecy Act and fulfill AML obligations at the financial institution level.
Priority User Protection: In case of issuer bankruptcy, stablecoin holders' claims take precedence over other claimants.
Clear Regulatory Jurisdiction: Clearly stipulates that payment stablecoins do not fall under securities, commodities, or investment company categories, clarifying regulatory boundaries.
In short, as the first federal-level stablecoin bill, the market generally believes the GENIUS Act will help stablecoins move beyond the wild growth stage and formally integrate into the compliant market. However, the Act also imposes strict compliance requirements on existing stablecoin issuers, with USDT, registered overseas, having a relatively complex reserve asset portfolio (partially in Bitcoin and gold), and long-term refusal of complete audit disclosure, likely to be the most severely impacted.
In a previous Forbes interview, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino stated that the company plans to issue a new compliant stablecoin in the U.S. market, tailored to the "highly banked and digitized U.S. economy", but this may only be Tether's compromise in addressing the U.S. stablecoin compliance trend. After all, USDT is Tether's core product, and USDT will predictably face greater competitive pressure in the near future, which is obviously not good news for Tether. WSJ previously reported that the GENIUS Act's compliance requirements might make Tether the "biggest loser".
Similar situations are not limited to the United States. In February this year, the EU's Crypto Assets Market Regulation Act (MiCA) published a list of compliant stablecoin issuers, with a total of 10 institutions obtaining licenses, including Tether's biggest competitor Circle (USDC issuer), but Tether was not on the list.
Under Pressure, Tether Accelerates Deployment
With the storm approaching, Tether naturally won't "sit and wait". Recently, Paolo Ardoino emphasized that Tether will continue to focus its business on markets outside the United States, serving 3 billion users who have not yet fully accessed the traditional financial system, avoiding direct competition between USDT and other stablecoins leaning towards mainstream finance.
Meanwhile, Tether is also accelerating deployment both within and outside the cryptocurrency industry to find new growth points.
According to Odaily Planet Daily's statistics, in 2025 alone, Tether has frequently made moves in cryptocurrency vertical fields such as mining, wallets, Layer 1/Layer 2, and exchanges through direct entry or indirect investment.
[The translation continues in the same manner for the rest of the text, maintaining the original structure and translating all non-tagged content to English.]In April, Paolo Ardoino revealed in a recent interview that Tether plans to launch its own AI platform in June (or September), which will be a peer-to-peer alternative to models like OpenAI, allowing users to control their own data and perform all reasoning, executing complex AI logic on their own devices.
In April, Tether announced the completion of a tender offer for up to 49,596,500 common shares of South American agricultural giant Adecoagro S.A., at a price of $12.41 per share, with a total amount exceeding $615 million.
In May, Tether announced the upcoming launch of QVAC (QuantumVerse Automatic Computer), an intelligent development platform that enables highly scalable AI applications and agents to run directly on local devices without relying on centralized services and cloud infrastructure, thereby protecting users from corporate access to private user data.
In June, Tether announced that it formally requested participation in Juventus Football Club's capital increase plan in May and applied for a board seat. Tether currently holds over 10% of Juventus Club's shares, making it the second-largest shareholder after the controlling shareholder Exor.
In mid-June, Tether announced a strategic equity acquisition of Elemental Altus, a Canadian-based listed gold royalty company, with the strategy aimed at integrating long-term stable assets like gold and Bitcoin into its ecosystem.
At the end of June, Paolo Ardoino spoke publicly again, stating that the brain-computer interface company Blackrock Neurotech, in which Tether invested $200 million last April, is far more advanced than Elon Musk's Neuralink.
Just yesterday, Paolo Ardoino also announced that PearPass, the open-source password manager developed by Tether, has started testing and will soon be open-sourced on the platform...
The Best Days Are Gone
With its breakthrough advantages in stablecoin liquidity and adoption, Tether, with only 150 employees, achieved approximately $13 billion in profits in 2024, making it the most profitable enterprise in the cryptocurrency industry and even the entire world.
However, the best days are now in the past, and the wild growth phase of stablecoins is about to end.In the future, Tether will inevitably face market competition from new and old competitors with stronger backgrounds, more thorough compliance, and stricter audits.
For Tether, it's time to look to the future, and based on its recent layout pace, it seems to have realized this.
