(Bloomberg) -- Tether Holdings Ltd., issuer of the $115 billion stablecoin USDT, plans to double the size of its workforce over the next year to bulk up in areas like compliance.
The company expects to reach a headcount of about 200 people by mid-2025, Chief Executive Officer Paolo Ardoino said in an interview with Bloomberg News. Tether will also add staff in the finance department, which manages the $118 billion of assets backing USDT.
“We are very proud of the fact that we are very lean and we want to remain lean because we want to be flexible,” Adroino said. “We are very careful when we hire people, we hire only senior people.”
Despite its small workforce, Tether has risen to become a financial juggernaut generating $1.3 billion in second-quarter profit on the back of its popular stablecoin. The biggest crypto exchange operators, like Binance Holdings Ltd. and Coinbase Global Inc., employ thousands of people.
Monitoring for potential illicit activity on the secondary market involving USDT — like trading on exchanges and over-the-counter desks — calls for “different types of tools that are much more automated,” Ardoino said. The primary market is where investors buy or redeem USDT with Tether directly.
Tether has repeatedly drawn scrutiny over the illicit use of USDT. A Wall Street Journal report in April detailed how the stablecoin has been used by Russian arms smugglers to skirt US sanctions. Tether has said it’s cooperating with authorities worldwide to ensure USDT isn’t being used for illegal purposes.
The stablecoin firm in May announced a partnership with Chainalysis Inc. to “methodically monitor transactions” with capabilities including sanctions screening.
Tether has started putting the yields accumulated from its vast holding of Treasuries to work, making roughly $2 billion worth of startup investments in the past two years. It has backed companies like Northern Data Group and Bitdeer Technologies Group, the US-listed miner, and has outlined plans to continue the investment spree.
A team of just 15 people oversee those investments, according to a June report. At the same time, Ardoino said he’s cautious about expanding the workforce too aggressively.
“There is nothing that I hate more than all those companies, especially Silicon Valley companies, that hire hundreds of people during the bull runs to fire them as soon as there is a downturn in the market,” he said. “That I think is one of the most unfair things you can do to employees.”
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