Tether CTO Slams WSJ Article On Restarting Loans

Tether chief technology officer Paolo Ardoino criticized a Wall Street Journal report that spoke about the company’s USDT denominated secured loans. The report included a company official’s comment explaining the circumstances in which the new loans were given out in the second quarter of the current year. Earlier, CoinGape reported that the company was silently lending out again.

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Not Tether Spokesperson

The issue was around the company’s financial statement that said it increased the issuing of USDT denominated loans, which goes against its own announcement on minimizing its loan exposure to zero in 2023. In December 2022, Tether addressed the concerns around rising burden of secured loans by laying out a plan to reduce the exposure. The recent quarterly reported, however, showed that the secured loans part had actually increased slightly in 2023, compared to the same period in 2022.

Further to this, the WSJ report quoted a comment by Alex Welch, who was originally said to be a Tether spokesperson. Ardiono clarified that the WSJ report wrongly quoted the comment as Welch was not even a Tether employee in the first place. In the report, Welch cited a “Few short term loan requests from clients” as the reason for rise in secured loans.

“The person that WSJ cites in its article is not a Tether spokeperson nor works at Tether, as that person repeatedly said in her correspondence with the tabloid.”

Tether Reducing Loan Exposure: CTO

Paolo Ardoino reverted that the company was in fact set to gain a profit of $4 billion per year and hence reducing the exposure to secured loans. Reiterating the plan, he said Tether is still committed to continue until secured loans are removed from the reserves.

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