Ardoino's Decentralized Debt Claim Sparks Debate Over Ownership and Risk
Tether's CEO Paolo Ardoino claims that 650 million people have decentralized US debt through holding stablecoins, specifically USDT. However, this figure is attributed to Tether itself, not an independent count of Treasury investors.
Ardoino's point was about reducing concentration risk, as hundreds of millions of users are unlikely to decide together to sell U.S. debt in a single morning. This macroeconomic intuition has force, but the actual ownership and control of USDT tokens is more complex than Ardoino suggests.
Tether's documents show that users own transferable tokens denominated in dollars, not directly owning Treasury bills or benefiting from reserve investment gains above token face value. The reserve assets sit on the issuer's side of the structure, and Tether retains control over portfolio composition and redemption terms.