Paolo Ardoino

Paolo Ardoino is the CEO of Tether, appointed to the role in December 2023. He also serves as Chief Technology Officer of Bitfinex. Under his leadership, Tether's stablecoin USDT has become the largest US dollar-backed stablecoin by market capitalisation. Tether has expanded beyond USDT to issue stablecoins pegged to other currencies, including the euro, the Mexican peso, the offshore Chinese yuan, and the UAE dirham, as well as Tether Gold. Ardoino has stated that stablecoins are most effective when used outside the country whose national currency they replicate, citing high inflation and limited banking access as key drivers of USDT adoption. Tether has invested approximately $2.5 billion in sustainable energy and technology sectors, around $1 billion in AI infrastructure company Northern Data, and $200 million in Blackrock Neurotech, with Ardoino stating these investments are funded from Tether's profits.

Ardoino joined Bitfinex in 2014 as a software engineer, working on the exchange's trading engine and backend infrastructure. He became CTO of Bitfinex in 2016 and CTO of Tether in 2017, a position he held until becoming CEO in December 2023. Earlier in his career, he worked as a researcher at the University of Genoa on cybersecurity and cryptography projects for military applications, then at a hedge fund developing trading algorithms. In 2013, he founded Fincluster, a London-based technology startup building cloud-based financial service applications for fund managers. In 2022, he co-founded Holepunch, an open-source platform for building peer-to-peer products. That same year, he worked with the mayor of Lugano, Switzerland, to enable the city to accept Tether and other cryptocurrencies for municipal payments. Ardoino was born in Cisano sul Neva, Italy, in 1984 and holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Genoa.