infrastructure

Tether

Tether Operations Limited

Tether Operations Limited is a privately-held BVI/El Salvador-jurisdictioned issuer behind USDT, the world's largest stablecoin. Parent group iFinex also owns Bitfinex. Recent expansion includes USAT (US-compliant), Tether Gold, Hadron tokenization, and energy/AI investments.

Official site Documentation Updated today
Scale
Updated 1d ago
TVL
$162.0B
24h volume
$75.0B
USDT supply
$162B
Group profit 2024
~$13B
Reported by Tether
Company

Tether Operations Limited

Country
British Virgin Islands
HQ
San Salvador
Founded
Jul 1, 2014
Structure
private
Employees
~120
Key people
  • Paolo Ardoino CEO & CTO
  • Stuart Hoegner General Counsel
Timeline

Timeline

  1. Oct 6, 2014
    USDT launches as Realcoin on Omni Layer
  2. Nov 26, 2017
    USDT ERC-20 launches
  3. Apr 30, 2019
    USDT on Tron
  4. Feb 23, 2021
    NYAG settlement: $18.5M
  5. Oct 15, 2021
    CFTC fine: $41M
  6. Mar 15, 2025
    HQ relocation to El Salvador
  7. Sep 1, 2025
    USAT launch (US-compliant Tether)
Funding and investors

Funding and investors

Investors
Privately held by iFinex
Products

Products

Own products
  • USDT
  • EURT
  • XAUT (gold)
  • Tether Gold (vaulted)
  • Hadron (tokenization platform)
  • Tether Energy
  • Tether AI
  • USAT (US-compliant, 2025)
Integrations
  • Binance
  • OKX
  • Bybit
  • Tron Network (largest supply)
  • Aave / Curve / Uniswap
Stablecoins and chains

Stablecoins and chains

Stablecoins
usdt
Chains
ethereum tron solana bsc polygon arbitrum optimism base
Security and audits

Security and audits

Audits
  • BDO Italia Apr 30, 2026 USDT quarterly reserve attestation Report →
Historic incidents
  • !May 2022: brief depeg to $0.95 during Terra collapse; recovered after $16B in redemptions.
  • !2017-2019 NYAG investigation found reserves were commingled with Bitfinex.
Risk notes

Risk notes

  • ● Reserve composition transparency vs. Big-4 audit
  • ● Heavy Tron concentration (~50% of supply)
  • ● Regulatory divergence (delisted from EU venues)
Competitors

Competitors

CirclePaxosFirst Digital Labs
Resources

Resources

Notes

For deeper context on Tether’s role in stablecoin commerce, see the blog and the stablecoins index.