Is it too soon to say crypto winter? Perhaps. But it certainly is getting ugly out there: Asset prices are in freefall, key legislation hangs by a thread, and members of Crypto Twitter fret it’s their turn to learn what it’s like to “have fun staying poor.” One company, though, is sitting pretty amid all this. That would be Tether, which last week reported $10 billion in profits for 2025, and has amassed so much gold it’s now storing bars of the stuff in Swiss bunkers from World War II.
I recently sat down with Tether’s CEO Paolo Ardoino, whose view of crypto and the future is the subject of my latest Fortune magazine feature. The vision Ardoino shared is a dark one: He thinks Europe—and possibly the West more broadly—is on the cusp of a cultural and economic death spiral, and that new forms of decentralized technology offer the best hope for surviving this coming collapse.
This technology includes new currency networks, including the USDT stablecoin, which has become so popular in parts of Africa that “Tether” has become a verb. During our chat, however, Ardoino made clear he views Tether as much bigger than crypto. He sees a world where people communicate over P2P servers that lie beyond the reach of giant telecom companies. Tether, he thinks, can help provide this service as well as decentralized options for things like cloud computing and even farming.
This may sound pie-in-the-sky, but Tether is a company to take seriously. The company is sitting on a gusher of revenue thanks to the interest it earns on USDT’s reserves. And unlike here in the U.S., where Coinbase and banks are in a lobbying slugfest over how to share that revenue with consumers, Ardoino says Tether’s overseas customers are not particularly concerned about yield. That means it will continue to have billions to invest in its decentralized dreams—and, indeed, it has already laid out billions to invest in P2P versions of social media, AI, satellites, and more.
The question is whether any of this can work. I’m intrigued by the idea of new forms of global, permissionless technologies gaining traction. And I fear that Ardoino may be right in predicting that demand for these P2P services—including crypto—will accelerate as governments grow more dysfunctional.
But I’m also skeptical about Tether’s proposals to rewire entire societies around decentralized services. This may be possible in small, homogeneous populations like those of El Salvador or Suriname—countries that Ardoino regards as model societies—but it doesn’t sound very realistic for places like the U.S. or China.
Time will tell where Ardoino’s view of decentralization will catch on but, for now, it’s enough to say Tether, despite its controversies, is a company to watch closely. And speaking of big names in crypto, I’m pleased to announce that Fortune this spring will be dropping the inaugural Crypto 100 list—a first of its kind ranking of leading firms in ten categories in the tradition of the Fortune 500. More details soon.
Jeff John Roberts
jeff.roberts@fortune.com
@jeffjohnroberts
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com