“[At Tether] We are Bitcoiners at heart. We believe in Bitcoin’s mission to bring economic freedom to the world,” Ardoino said in a chat on Keat on Wednesday. “If we have economic freedom but no freedom of speech, we are not really free, are we?”
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Tether was launched in Hong Kong a decade ago and has since turned into a key component of Web3 and is often used as the main liquidity source for other cryptocurrencies as it is pegged to the US dollar. Tether still has an active legal entity in Hong Kong, according to government records, but Ardoino said it is “dormant” in Hong Kong and the company no longer has any personnel.
Tether is now the world's default blockchain-based dollar, and Ardoino said his new venture will take on tech giants such as Metaplatforms, which owns Facebook and WhatsApp, and Google. thinking. Ardoino said that because Pear Runtime is a peer-to-peer technology, it eliminates the need for expensive server infrastructure, allowing developers to focus on building apps.
Achieving this will depend on the support of Tether, which Ardoino pointed out made more than $6 billion in profits last year.
“We're not looking to make more money,” he said. “We… invest in companies that align with our vision of creating tools that bring freedom and prepare for the apocalypse.”
Built in-house by Holepunch, Keet is the first flagship tool to use Pear Runtime. Like other peer-to-peer apps, users connect directly to other computers, so other users in the chat room see their Internet Protocol (IP) address. However, messages are end-to-end encrypted and traffic cannot be publicly monitored, so only those with whom users chat can see those addresses, Ardoino said.
Holepunch CEO Mathias Buus Madsen said the company is unable to share developer statistics for the same reason. But participants from Asia, including India and “the Hong Kong region,” are “definitely the majority,” he said.
The app already has some cryptocurrency features built-in by incorporating Lightning Wallet. The Lightning Network is a so-called Layer 2 payment protocol on the Bitcoin blockchain that enables fast and cheap transfers of small amounts of Bitcoin. The Holepunch team is also working quickly to integrate Tether, also known as USDT.
“Bitcoin is unstoppable money and Keet is an unstoppable app. That's why we thought it would be better to have Bitcoin in the first place,” Ardoino said. “Still, USDT will likely be introduced soon, within the next few months.”
As the cryptocurrency sector recovers from the 2022 crash, the total market value of Tether's USDT stablecoin exceeded USD 100 billion last month and currently stands at around USD 106 billion, according to data from CoinGecko. According to market tracker DefiLlama, the total amount of stablecoins in circulation has reached USD 152 billion, with Tether's market share close to 70 percent.
The company's large presence in the industry has also led to increased scrutiny in recent years and criticism over a lack of transparency regarding the reserves that support USDT.
Tether Holdings, currently based in the British Virgin Islands, has traditionally revealed little information about itself. It was started by the same people behind cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex, where Ardoino is chief technology officer (CTO). According to his LinkedIn profile, Ardoino joined Bitfinex in October 2014 as a software developer, and in 2017 he became his CTO of Tether.
Tether publishes proof of its reserves on a quarterly basis, and in October the company told Bloomberg it would begin publishing data about its reserves in real time. Mr. Ardoino did not disclose the schedule in response to a question, but the failure of FTX in 2022 has made major accounting firms more hesitant to collaborate with major virtual currency companies for fear of reputational risk. He said a full audit remains difficult.
“FTX hasn't made our lives easier,” he says.
Another source of controversy is the widespread use of USDT in cybercrime.
Ardoino denounced some of the press coverage surrounding Tether in recent years, saying the company is working with the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Secret Intelligence Service to use USDT to track criminals. Ta.
“You have to be a really, really stupid criminal to use Tether,” Ardoino said, pointing to Tether's data transparency because it runs on a public blockchain.
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Ardoino said Tether is “also following regulatory developments” in Hong Kong, adding that it is in talks with local companies to explore ways to enter the Hong Kong market.
Asked if he believed apps like Keet could accelerate illicit financial flows or affect financial stability, Ardoino demurred.
“USDT supports the last mile. It’s the people. [whose] “Their total assets are $100 and they don't have bank accounts,” he said. “Bankers don't care about us.”
Still, Ardoino made it clear that there are ideological underpinnings to the new P2P protocol. He pointed out that the Joker's words in Christopher Nolan's second Batman movie, The Dark Knight, “reflect well” on Keto's mission.
“It's not about the money. It's about sending a message.”
