Trump and Tether: The Crypto Saga Nobody Ordered 🍿

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In the latest episode of “Crypto Theatre: America’s Wild Ride,” Paul Ardoino, the beleaguered CEO of Tether, has ascended the pulpit (or was it just a particularly tacky CNBC set?) to discuss the fateful intersection of Donald J. Trump and the celebrated (or is it notorious?) USDT stablecoin. Ardoino, not exactly the Lord Emsworth of finance, assured interviewer Dan Murphy on April 30th that, when it comes to USDT’s fate, it’s (as usual) all about America. Apparently, as goes the American Dream, so goes the unregulated marketplace of questionable digital IOUs. Tear out that page for your economics textbook, if you wish.

Mr. Ardoino was asked, with all the subtlety of a bulldozer at a garden party: “How much of Tether’s future depends on the coiffured one remaining at the helm?” Paul, rather like a man explaining the appeal of gin to a teetotaler, replied that it’s all down to the indomitable U.S. dollar—a product he calls America’s “finest” export (presumably second only to reality television and fast food innovation).

The conversation then took a detour, with Paul declaring the global populace’s feverish desire for the American dollar, owing—if one is to believe him—not to centuries of fiscal imperialism, but apparently to Donald Trump’s endorsement alone. If you ask a thousand souls outside the U.S., he claims, at least 999 would pledge allegiance to the greenback (the one abstainer presumably prefers goats or magic beans).

Paul, not content with merely rewriting global economics, also let slip the existence of a brand-new, domestically flavoured stablecoin. “A payment product for real Americans, used by actual people,” he intoned—raising the question: who, exactly, were the previous iterations for? Wallabies? Venetian gondoliers?

Dan Murphy, heroically undeterred, pressed Ardoino about the age-old issue: the sordid tendency of stablecoins to find themselves mired in criminal entanglements. Ardoino, channeling his inner Jeeves, reminded everyone that cash itself remains the preferred tender for the world’s ne’er-do-wells—stablecoin’s only mistake is being more efficient. Rest easy, then: Tether has “ecosystem monitoring tools,” which in crypto-speak means, “Trust us, we have an Excel sheet—somewhere.”

As the bell tolls for American financial innocence, Tether still reigns atop its dubious throne, now freshly invigorated by Trump’s crypto renaissance and the minting of another billion USDT on Tron—a measure that surely signals robustness, or possibly just means they found spare change down the back of the blockchain sofa. 🍀

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2025-04-30 16:41