Tether

Founded in July 2014 by Brock Pierce, Craig Sellars, and Reeve Collins, Tether (USDT), originally known as "Realcoin," is a stablecoin that aims to keep a fixed 1:1 exchange ratio with the US Dollar (USD). Tether was one of the first stablecoins created, built upon Mastercoin (Omni), a protocol layer for Bitcoin that introduced the stablecoin concept in 2012. The first tokens were issued on Omni in October 2014, with the project rebranding to “Tether” in November 2014. Tether pioneered what is now known as a fiat-collateralized stablecoin model and is the most widely transacted stablecoin.

In January 2015, Bitfinex became the first platform to enable trading of USDT.

In November 2017, Tether was hacked, in which the “Tether Treasury” wallet address was drained of ~$30.95 million in USDT tokens. While these funds were not recovered, the project team marked these stolen tokens as “unredeemable.”

In 2018, Bitfinex, facing an alleged $850.00 million loss due to Crypto Capital's actions, secured a line of credit from Tether. This loan was scrutinized by the New York State Attorney General (NYAG) since Tether's reserves, believed to fully back USDT, were used. In April 2019, the NYAG revealed conflicting transactions between Bitfinex and Tether in an alleged attempt to cover the loss. By 2021, Bitfinex claimed that it had repaid the loan; however, the NYAG found that Bitfinex and Tether made additional false statements to conceal the losses, ultimately leading to financial arrangements between the two to cover the losses. Tether and Bitfinex settled with the NYAG in February 2021, agreeing to pay an $18.50 million fine, ceasing trading activity with residents of New York (United States), and implementing “a number of steps to increase transparency.” Of note, a Tether blog post states, “Under the terms of the settlement, we admit no wrongdoing.”

In October 2021, the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued an order filing and settling charges against Tether Holdings Limited, Tether Limited, Tether Operations Limited, and Tether International Limited “for making untrue or misleading statements and omissions of material fact in connection with the U.S. dollar tether token (USDT) stablecoin. The order requires Tether to pay a civil monetary penalty of $41.00 million and cease and desist from further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) and CFTC regulations, as charged.” Additional case background information can be seen here.

In October 2023, long-time CTO Paolo Ardoino was appointed as CEO of Tether, succeeding Jean-Louis van der Velde. According to the announcement, Ardoino’s CEO duties would begin in December 2023.

Since 2024, Tether shifted project strategy beyond stablecoins, focusing on interoperability and broader blockchain infrastructure. Furthermore, USDT0 debuted in October 2025 as a new token built using LayerZero’s Omnichain Fungible Token (OFT) standard on Ethereum.