Author | Clow
Author: Baihua Blockchain
In 2024, a company called Tether submitted a stunning report card that left Wall Street speechless.
Net profit of $13 billion, with about 150 employees.
Profit per employee is about $85.62 million, nearly 300 times that of Goldman Sachs and 85 times that of Nvidia.
This is not some AI unicorn, nor is it a top hedge fund. It is simply a stablecoin issuer—the company that issues USDT.
When this set of numbers began circulating in the financial circles, many people's first reaction was: How is this possible?
But if you understand Tether's business model, you will find that this is not just possible but even inevitable.
01. The Most Profitable Business in the World
The logic behind Tether's profits is referred to in the industry as the "stablecoin float game."
The rules are simple: You give Tether $1, and in return, you get 1 USDT. Tether takes your money and buys U.S. Treasury bonds.
The annual yield of U.S. Treasury bonds has long been maintained at over 5%, while USDT never pays any interest.
The difference in between all belongs to Tether.
As of the end of 2025, Tether held total exposure of $141 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds, making it the 17th largest holder of U.S. debt in the world, surpassing both Germany and South Korea.
From U.S. Treasury bonds alone, Tether generates over $4 billion in cash flow each year.
And this is just the first layer.
The second layer is gold and bitcoin. Tether holds gold worth about $17 billion and over 96,000 bitcoins. The sharp rise in gold prices in 2025 brought in an additional $5 billion in unrealized gains.
The third layer is liquidity premium. Those who give up 5% Treasury bond interest receive what? A digital dollar that can be used anytime in Turkey, Argentina, or Nigeria. For markets plagued by high inflation and foreign exchange controls, this kind of liquidity is worth more than the 5% annual return.
Essentially, Tether is a global "shadow bank" without branches, without tellers, operating year-round, dedicated to capturing the massive spreads overlooked by the traditional financial system due to inefficiency.
02. Breaking Through Traditional Payment Walls
The SWIFT system was built in the 1970s, and half a century later, its core logic hasn’t fundamentally changed: intermediary banks relay, multiple nodes take turns, taking at least 3 to 5 business days at best, with maximum comprehensive fees reaching up to 7%.
A payment sent from the U.S. to Nigeria must go through multiple layers from the originating bank to intermediate banks and finally to the receiving bank, with each layer taking its own fee.
Moreover, these banks have operating hours. A remittance initiated on Friday night must wait until the following Monday to start "running."
In contrast, a USDT transfer can arrive in the recipient's wallet in under 30 seconds on the Tron network for less than $1, operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week without stopping.
The cost difference is staggering. Traditional comprehensive fees for B2B cross-border payments range from 1.5% to 7%, and individual remittances sometimes exceed 11%; while the comprehensive costs for stablecoin networks are usually only between 0.5% to 2%.
Deeper impact lies in "reach."
Globally, there are still hundreds of millions of adults without bank accounts. But with a smartphone and internet access, one can create a crypto wallet and tap into global trade. In Africa and Latin America, USDT has become a common tool for small and medium-sized enterprises to pay international suppliers.
By 2025, the new generation of Web3 POS systems will start utilizing NFC technology to achieve "tap-to-pay," bringing crypto payments to retail checkout counters.
This wall is being breached from all directions.
03. Pay-Fi: The Logic of Money is Being Rewritten
Payment + Finance, this combination has a new name: Pay-Fi (Payment Finance).
Traditional payments address the issue of "money from A to B." Pay-Fi seeks to solve the problem of "money from A to B while also earning interest along the way."
Protocols like Huma Finance are working on tokenizing corporate receivables, providing instant financing through on-chain liquidity pools, addressing the prepayment capital pressure in cross-border trade. As of early 2026, the cumulative transaction amount of the Huma protocol has exceeded $10 billion, and its T+0 real-time clearing capability is attracting increasing attention from traditional financial institutions.
The war for underlying infrastructure is also ongoing. Ethereum L2 significantly lowers on-chain transaction costs through Rollup technology; Celestia and EigenDA further reduce costs at the data storage layer, making large-scale micropayments possible. Meanwhile, the Tron network, with its large USDT stock and extremely low transfer fees, remains the busiest stablecoin settlement network in the world.
The stablecoin market itself is also diversifying. USDT dominates offshore payments and emerging markets with a market share of about 59%; USDC, with its compliance and transparency, wins licensed institutions in the U.S., capturing a large share of institutional-level, compliance-first transfer/settlement scenarios. PayPal's PYUSD targets the retail end through its merchant network, while Ripple's RLUSD aims at large interbank settlements.
This market is no longer dominated by one entity, but is rapidly moving towards specialization and division of labor.
04. Tether's Ambition Boundaries
Having made so much money, how does Tether plan to use it?
Buy mining farms. In Uruguay, Paraguay, and El Salvador, Tether has invested over $2 billion to establish 15 energy and bitcoin mining sites, aiming to become the world's largest bitcoin miner.
Buy AI. Through channels such as Northern Data Group, Tether has invested over $1 billion in AI computing infrastructure.
Buy robots. By the end of 2025, Tether has invested €70 million in Italian AI robotics startup Generative Bionics; at the same time, is considering investing up to $1.15 billion in the German robotics company Neura, aiming to produce 5 million humanoid robots by 2030.
The logic behind this is not hard to understand: In an economy operated by AI agents and robots, the value exchange among them will require an instant, programmable digital currency. USDT has already become the most obvious candidate for this role.
On the regulatory side, this story is also gaining traction. In July 2025, the U.S. "GENIUS Act" was officially signed into law, opening a legal channel for regulated institutions to issue stablecoins and explicitly excluding stablecoins from being classified as securities and commodities. The EU's MiCA framework was fully implemented in the same year, with stablecoins moving from the "gray area" into the mainstream regulatory vision.
The core circles of Wall Street have also begun to enter the game. The primary dealer of U.S. Treasuries, Cantor Fitzgerald, holds about 5% of Tether's equity, and its CEO, Howard Lutnick, has repeatedly publicly vouched for the authenticity of Tether’s reserves. This deep binding means that Tether is no longer just a crypto project; it has quietly embedded itself into the利益网络 of traditional finance.
05. Conclusion
From a stablecoin issuer, to one of the top 20 holders of U.S. Treasury bonds, to an investor in robotic factories—each step of Tether's expansion points in the same direction:
The definition of money is quietly shifting from sovereign minting machines to digital networks that can provide higher efficiency and lower friction.
This process is not a revolution but a permeation.
SWIFT continues to operate, banks still open their doors, and the Federal Reserve is still adjusting interest rates. But another system is growing at an astonishing speed in the gaps between them.
For everyone involved, it might be worth asking oneself one question:
In the next decade, in which system will the money in your hands operate?
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