Tether Holdings, the company behind the stablecoin tether (USDT), is not exactly popular with the authorities. For example, the company has regularly been treated in the past for not having enough collateral for its stablecoin. The Wall Street Journal has now documents leaked from the US authorities who give a glimpse into how the ownership structure worked in the past. According to the document, Tether was owned by four individuals in 2018.
A look behind the scenes
The document, which dates back to 2021, reveals detailed information about exactly who owned shares of Tether Holdings and when. The largest stablecoin tether was founded in 2014 by Giancarlo Devasini and Brock Pierce. Four years later, in 2018, Pierce was no longer involved and Devasini owned 43 percent of the shares.
Devasini became involved in the crypto exchange Bitfinex, where he is still active. In 2018, two other major shareholders were Bitfinex’s CEO, Jean-Louis van der Velde and Stuart Hoegner, another high profile at the exchange. Both owned 15 percent of Tether Holdings. The fourth major shareholder was a Thai-British businessman and owned 13 percent of the company.
So these four men owned 86 percent of Tether in 2018. This is the first behind-the-scenes look at Tether in terms of its ownership structure. The stablecoin has often come under fire for its lack of transparency.
Is Tether Vulnerable?
In 2021, a lawsuit found that Tether misrepresented its collateral. Tether had to pay more than 18 million in fines and was forced to make periodic disclosures of its financial reserves in the future.
After the implosion of FTX, USDT briefly lost its link with the dollar and fell to a value of 93 cents. Concerns were expressed that Tether might collapse in the event of another capitulation. For the time being, Tether remains the largest and most widely used stablecoin.