Tether holds more American government debt than most countries on earth, employs a few hundred people, and sells one product: a dollar, for a dollar.

This is how that business works — you send a dollar, you get a token, and Tether keeps the interest on the government debt it buys with your money. It earned billions doing it. But the thing that made it profitable wasn't a strategy. It was the Federal Reserve raising interest rates, which Tether had no say in at all.

Part 1 of THE STABLECOIN WARS.

NUMBERS & SOURCES
• $115B — US Treasury bills Tether held directly at 30 June 2026 (Tether Q2 2026 attestation, prepared by BDO). Counting reverse repo and money-market funds, Tether's total Treasury exposure is ~$141B (Q1 2026). Attestations are not a full audit.
• Israel $110.9B — total holdings of US Treasury securities, US Treasury TIC Table 5, June 2026. Tether is a company and does not appear on that table; the comparison is ours.
• $13B+ 2024 profit — Tether's own reported figure (31 Jan 2025). About $7B came from Treasuries and repo; roughly $5B was unrealised gains on gold and bitcoin. Sen. Elizabeth Warren's January 2025 letter used a figure of $7.7B.
• $20–70M profit per employee — the ~$7B float profit divided by the published headcounts, which disagree: the Financial Times reported ~300 staff (Feb 2026), one workforce estimate says 321, and Paolo Ardoino has used ~100 in interviews.
• Goldman Sachs ~$307K per employee — FY2024 net earnings of $14.28B divided by 46,500 year-end staff (Goldman Sachs, 15 Jan 2025).
• Two thirds held in poorer countries — share of stablecoin supply held in emerging markets, Chainalysis 2025 Geography of Cryptocurrency report.
• $184B outstanding — USDT in circulation at 30 June 2026.
• Ardoino quote — Tether's FY2025 attestation release, 30 January 2026.

Some scenes are cinematic reconstructions of documented events. All quotes, dates, and figures are verified.

#business #stablecoins #tether #finance #economics #businessonion #federalreserve