On January 27, 2026, Tether dropped two major bombs almost simultaneously: on one hand, it announced the launch of the federally regulated dollar-backed token USA₮, and on the other hand, it disclosed through the media that it recorded approximately $15 billion in profits in 2025. Prior to this, the market capitalization of USDT, which had already reached $187 billion, along with a daily trading volume exceeding that of all competitors combined, had long established Tether as one of the de facto global dollar liquidity infrastructures. Now, this company, once seen as a "crypto rebel," is actively stepping into the federal regulatory spotlight, transforming a fringe experiment into a "Made in America" dollar product, with the core conflict surfacing: a issuer that grew in the regulatory gaps is attempting to pivot from a decentralized fringe player to a new type of dollar power entity operating within U.S. rules.
From Crypto Rebel to Federal License Seeker
● The history of expansion in the gray area: For a long time, Tether relied on USDT to occupy a key position in various exchanges, over-the-counter settlements, and cross-border capital flows, yet it has always been labeled with tags such as insufficient information disclosure and ambiguous regulatory jurisdiction. In an environment rife with audit doubts and regulatory investigations, this company not only remained at the table but also managed to pile USDT's market value to $187 billion within a few years, a scale sufficient to secure a seat in any financial stability discussion.
● From resistance to leveraging regulation: In early narratives, USDT was often seen as a tool to bypass the traditional financial system and hedge against bank scrutiny, strongly tied to the "anti-regulatory" crypto culture. Now, the same company has chosen to issue USA₮, which is federally regulated and involves U.S. licensed financial institutions, indicating a shift from viewing regulation as a hindrance to seeing it as a lever to amplify its business landscape—licenses are no longer constraints but tickets to access larger pools of capital.
● The pressures and incentives behind the shift: As USDT rose to a scale of hundreds of billions of dollars, with holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds even exceeding that of an economy like South Korea, Tether inevitably earned the label of a "systemic risk candidate." Remaining in the regulatory gray area means potentially facing policy backlash at critical moments; moving towards federal regulation offers the opportunity to reshape itself from a "source of risk" to a "regulated dollar infrastructure," while also opening up commercial space for collaboration with banks, asset managers, and more mainstream institutions.
The U.S. Power Puzzle Behind a USA₮
● Personnel signals and Washington interfaces: Tether's appointment of a former White House official as CEO serves as a "political business card" delivered to Washington. The senior structure, which was previously dominated by technology and crypto circle connections, is gradually being supplemented with individuals familiar with U.S. administrative and legislative processes, signaling that the company is no longer content to survive in offshore jurisdictions but aims to find its place within the U.S. federal discourse system, engage in dialogue with regulators, interact with policymakers, and even strive for a voice in the rule-making phase.
● Compliance chain of Anchorage and Cantor: In the design of USA₮, Anchorage Digital Bank acts as the issuing entity, while Cantor Fitzgerald is responsible for custody. Both are deeply embedded in the regulated U.S. financial system. The former is a regulated digital asset bank, and the latter is a well-established Wall Street brokerage and custodian. This division of roles ensures that USA₮ is embedded in the infrastructure of U.S. compliant finance from the outset, directly interfacing with the regulatory system from KYC/AML to custody reviews, rather than remaining in an offshore self-referential model.
● "Made in America dollar-backed token" rhetoric: Tether's head Paolo Ardoino describes USA₮ as "providing institutions with a choice of dollar-backed tokens made in America," which precisely hits the psychological mark of institutional clients: on one hand, it emphasizes "Made in America" and regulated dollar backing, reducing compliance and reputational risks; on the other hand, it packages USA₮ as a tool compatible with the traditional dollar system, subject to auditing and accountability. In the intersection of traditional finance and crypto, this rhetoric itself is part of financial product design, aimed at guiding institutional funds that previously harbored reservations about USDT into a new channel more easily accepted by compliance departments and regulators.
Holding More U.S. Debt than South Korea: The Outline of a Shadow Central Bank Emerges
● Beyond the sovereign debt holdings of a single country: According to disclosures from Fortune, Tether currently holds U.S. Treasury bonds exceeding the scale of an economy like South Korea, pulling it directly from the "tech company" category into the "quasi-sovereign fund pool" coordinate system. When a private issuer's holdings in the U.S. Treasury market can be compared to that of a nation, its position in the dollar credit chain and liquidity distribution far exceeds that of ordinary financial enterprises, resembling a shadow central bank operating in the background.
● Potential leverage of liquidity and interest rates: The daily trading volume of USDT has been disclosed to exceed that of all competitors combined, indicating that a significant amount of dollar-denominated transactions, which are outside the traditional banking system, are being completed through Tether's pipeline. Such a scale of dollar tokens, once adjustments are made in minting/redemption, Treasury bond management, and cash position management, could marginally influence short-term dollar interest rates, offshore dollar liquidity patterns, and the dependency paths of some emerging markets on dollar funds, with spillover effects extending beyond mere "technical details" within the crypto circle.
● Concerns from a policy and regulatory perspective: When a profit-driven private company operates U.S. Treasury bonds exceeding sovereign scale on its balance sheet and radiates global payment and transaction behavior through tokenized dollars, financial regulators in the U.S. and other countries must reassess risk boundaries. If a "shadow central bank" experiences asset mismatches, confidence crises, or compliance shocks in extreme scenarios, its impact will not be limited to a specific public chain or exchange but could penetrate into the stability of the dollar market, the safety of cross-border capital, and even the fragile links of other countries' local currency financial systems.
From Satellites to Farms: Tether's Landscape Restructuring
● The puzzle of diversified business groupings: Around its core dollar token business, Tether has quietly laid out plans in multiple fields such as satellites, data centers, agriculture, telecommunications, and media in recent years, gradually evolving from a single currency issuer into a conglomerate interwoven with assets and businesses. Satellites and telecommunications point to communication and edge networks, data centers carry computing power and storage, agriculture roots itself in the real economy, while the media sector aims at information dissemination and public opinion shaping. These seemingly scattered investments are sketching a business profile that far exceeds that of a "token issuance company."
● Infrastructure investments building a moat: As Tether increases its investments in data centers and telecommunications networks, it is effectively building a more foundational infrastructure for USDT and USA₮, gaining control over more links from data collection, transaction routing to payment networks. Satellite networks can reduce reliance on traditional infrastructure, enhancing payment and communication capabilities in extreme environments; media and content platforms provide channels for voicing in key public opinion controversies, adding a "soft power" defense line to brand and policy battles, all of which substantively thickens the moat around the dollar token business.
● Breaking free from the stereotype of "crypto companies": Traditional perceptions of crypto enterprises are mostly limited to trading platforms, wallets, or on-chain applications, while Tether's trajectory has begun to reveal an intertwining of finance, infrastructure, and media discourse. On one end are dollar tokens and U.S. Treasury bonds worth hundreds of billions, on the other end are globally distributed data centers, satellites, and physical assets, with media and narrative construction bridging the gap. This structure resembles a new type of financial-infrastructure complex rather than a singular token issuance entity.
Crypto's Marginal Topics Become Wall Street's Must-Answer Questions
● The shift in narrative focus: As Paolo Ardoino stated, "stablecoins are shifting from a marginal topic in cryptocurrency to a focal point of mainstream financial discussions." In the past, discussions surrounding USDT and similar products often remained within trading circles and on-chain ecosystems. Now, as holdings, profit scales, and Treasury bond exposures are amplified by mainstream media, they have entered the formal agendas of corporate finance, asset allocation, and risk management committees, becoming questions that Wall Street and global financial institutions must address directly, no longer a niche topic that can be ignored.
● The penetration path from exchanges to institutions to regulators: Upon the launch of USA₮, it immediately gained initial support from platforms like Bybit, Crypto.com, and Kraken, forming the first leap from crypto-native exchanges to larger institutional capital pools. Once exchanges and market makers become familiar with and adopt this token, asset managers, hedge funds, and corporate finance departments will find it easier to access this "Made in America" dollar channel within existing infrastructures. Subsequently, this will lead to regulatory follow-ups regarding licenses, reporting obligations, and systemic risk assessments, with the penetration path transmitting from the ground up to rule-makers.
● The competitive relationship under the backdrop of elections and digital narratives: In the context of the U.S. election game, currency digitization, and pressures on Treasury bond supply, the "private dollar" path represented by Tether and USA₮ forms a subtle competitive relationship with the officially led digital dollar or central bank digital currencies. On one hand, Tether, by holding a large amount of U.S. Treasury bonds and actively accepting federal regulation, objectively strengthens the demand for dollar assets, exhibiting a certain "symbiotic" quality; on the other hand, a private issuer operating a digital dollar network globally may create tensions with central banks' demands for monetary sovereignty, data control, and financial stability. Whether these two paths serve as complementary experimental fields or future institutional adversaries remains to be seen through political and market dynamics.
When Private Dollars Encounter the Reconstruction of National Order
The emergence of USA₮ resembles a structural reboot rather than a simple new coin listing: by layering tags such as federally regulated, made in America, and institution-friendly onto the new product, Tether attempts to reshape its risk and valuation framework within U.S. rules—shifting some of the uncertainties surrounding USDT onto a vehicle more easily accepted by compliance, accounting, and regulatory systems, thereby maintaining its global dollar liquidity influence while securing a higher margin of institutional safety.
In the coming years, multiple variables will jointly determine the direction of this game: the U.S. Congress's orientation on relevant legislation will determine the survival space for private dollar products; the pace of central bank digital currency advancement will influence the boundary between official digital dollars and private issuance; the speed and depth of institutional adoption will vote with real money, filtering which tokenized dollar solutions can stand firm in practice; and on a more macro geopolitical level, the tug-of-war between countries over dollar dependence and de-dollarization will also shape regulatory attitudes towards such products.
In this process, several indicators from Tether are worth being treated as precursory signals for observing the rearrangement of the new dollar order: first, whether its annual profits continue to expand at the level of $15 billion, reflecting the degree to which dollar spreads and asset returns accumulate in private hands; second, whether its holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds continue to rise or adjust, and what kind of implicit interaction forms with U.S. fiscal and monetary policies; third, whether changes in U.S. regulatory and policy statements shift from tacit approval and management to a more explicit institutional positioning. The collision between private dollars and national order is no longer just a narrative game within the crypto circle but a frontline battle in the new round of global monetary structure adjustment.
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