According to U.Today, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino has dismissed the idea of allocating a portion of the company's profits to Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap. Ardoino has chosen Bitcoin over Ethereum, citing Bitcoin's immutability and limited supply as key factors. He stated, 'Bitcoin is immutable. Only 21 million coins. Easy choice.' Last May, Tether announced that it would allocate 15% of its profits toward buying Bitcoin to strengthen and diversify the company's reserves. Ardoino described Bitcoin as 'a long-term store of value with substantial growth potential.'
Tether's most recent quarterly report showed that its Bitcoin reserves remained unchanged despite a record-breaking net profit of $1.3 billion. However, Ardoino later clarified that Tether did purchase Bitcoin via its investment arm in 2024. This is not the first time Ardoino has criticized Ethereum. In 2022, following the much-anticipated Merge upgrade, he stated that Ethereum was still incapable of competing with Bitcoin and criticized the second-largest blockchain for frequently changing its narratives.
In his initial post, Ardoino pointed to Ethereum's poor performance against Bitcoin over the past few years. The pair is down 45% after peaking at 0.088 in December 2021. In May, Ethereum experienced a significant price spike following the unexpected approval of various spot ETFs. However, the flagship altcoin failed to maintain its momentum. Its future price action will likely depend on the amount of inflows, which have so far been underwhelming, largely due to outflows recorded by Grayscale's product.
