The world’s largest stablecoin issuer, Tether, is reportedly planning to double the size of its workforce by mid-2025, with a particular focus on its compliance team.
The plan would see Tether Holdings Ltd., the issuer of the USDT stablecoin, increase its staff to around 200 people, its CEO Paolo Ardoino told Bloomberg in an interview on Aug. 8.
“We are very proud of the fact that we are very lean and we want to remain lean because we want to be flexible,” he said before adding, “We are very careful when we hire people, we hire only senior people.”
Ardoino added that monitoring for potentially illicit activity on secondary markets involving its stablecoin calls for “different types of tools that are much more automated.”
Primary markets are where users buy or redeem USDT with Tether directly, and secondary markets are crypto exchanges and over-the-counter trading platforms.
The firm has faced scrutiny over the illicit use of USDT and continues to cooperate with authorities to prevent illegal activities. In May, it partnered with blockchain analytics and security firm Chainalysis to enhance transaction monitoring and sanctions screening.
Meanwhile, Tether has become a financial powerhouse, generating record-breaking profits of $5.2 billion in the first half of 2024, despite having a much smaller workforce compared to major tech and crypto companies.
“There is nothing that I hate more than all those companies, especially Silicon Valley companies, that hire hundreds of people during the bull runs to fire them as soon as there is a downturn in the market,” said Ardoino.
Related: Tether launches gold-backed, US dollar stablecoin Alloy
Tether, which launched a gold-backed stablecoin in June, has seen its dollar-pegged stablecoin supply grow by more than 25% since the beginning of 2024.
It currently has a circulating supply of $115 billion, giving USDT a commanding share of almost 70% of the overall stablecoin market.
Its closest rival, Circle, has a supply of $34.4 billion USDC and a market share of 21%, according to CoinGecko.
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