Short answers, pulled from the story.
Tether is a cryptocurrency stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar, intended to maintain a one-to-one value with the dollar. The company claims to hold reserves backing each token in circulation, though it has never completed a full independent audit to verify that claim. As of January 2024, USDT has been issued on fourteen separate protocols and blockchains.
Tether was founded by Craig Sellars, Brock Pierce, and Reeve Collins, and announced in July 2014 under the name Realcoin as a Santa Monica-based startup. The first tokens were issued on the 6th of October 2014. CEO Reeve Collins announced the rename to Tether on the 20th of November 2014.
Tether has never completed a full independent audit of its reserves despite repeated promises to do so. In January 2018, it ended its relationship with its auditor, and no audit has followed. Since July 2022, it has published quarterly attestations from the accounting company BDO Italia, which the Wall Street Journal described as less rigorous than a formal audit.
Tether paid a $41.6 million fine to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission in October 2021 for inaccurately claiming its tokens were fully backed by fiat dollars and for maintaining full reserves on only 27.6% of the days between 2016 and 2018. Its parent company iFinex separately paid $18.5 million in February 2021 to settle a lawsuit brought by the New York Attorney General, with no admission of wrongdoing. In October 2024, The Wall Street Journal reported Tether was the target of a federal criminal investigation for possible violations of sanctions and anti-money-laundering rules.
Tether holds 70% of the stablecoin market share and surpassed bitcoin in 2019 to become the world's most traded cryptocurrency by daily and monthly volume. Its nearest competitor, Circle, reached $24 billion in stablecoin value, barely more than a quarter of Tether's total at the time. By July 2025, USDT's market capitalization had surpassed $150 billion.
Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs reported Tether was the most-used stablecoin for criminal activity in 2023, linked to $19.3 billion in illicit transactions, down from $24.7 billion in 2022. In November 2023, Tether froze $225 million in cryptocurrency linked to a Southeast Asian human trafficking group running a pig butchering scam, at the request of the U.S. Secret Service. The company reported working with more than 140 law enforcement offices across 45 jurisdictions by 2024.