The CEO of Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin, is developing a new peer-to-peer technology that he hopes will further wrest financial control from big institutions, and the cryptocurrency giant he heads is pouring millions of dollars into it.
Tether intends to invest tens of millions of dollars into a new peer-to-peer chat and video conferencing app called Keet to make it “one of three most known communication applications in the world”, Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether and co-founder of Keet developer Holepunch, told the Post in an interview.
Built on a new peer-to-peer protocol called Pear Runtime, which Holepunch launched two months ago, the absence of any middleman or centralised server aligns with the ethos of Tether and Ardoino, who said he seeks to offer greater financial freedom.
“[At Tether] we are bitcoiners at heart. We believe in the bitcoin mission that is bringing financial freedom to the world,” Ardoino said in a chat conducted over Keet on Wednesday. “If you have financial freedom, but you don’t have freedom of speech … we are not really free, right?”
Tether was started in Hong Kong 10 years ago and has since transformed into a critical component of Web3, often as a main source of liquidity for other cryptocurrencies because of its peg to the US dollar. Tether still has an active corporate entity in Hong Kong, according to government records, but Ardoino said it is “dormant” and the company no longer has personnel in the city.
