This is the fourth character profile I've written. I remember last year Binance held a ranking of the top creators, and I didn't make the list. This time, I checked the rankings again and probably won't make it again. AI scoring has its own logic, which should be similar to Douyin. Writing this content will lower the score, which is a side effect of the evaluation. I still think I should keep writing, even though this kind of thing doesn't bring in money as quickly as doing contracts. However, it is very useful for friends in the cryptocurrency space who want to dig deep. Although it cannot be immediately converted into an increase in my account, if one has a deep cultural foundation, they can discern right from wrong and seize opportunities, gaining a deeper understanding of projects and future trends. Once the understanding is in place, wealth will naturally come.
Persist in doing what you love and what is right, and your energy can explode infinitely!
Giancarlo Devasini, one of the founders of USDT, was born in 1964 in Turin, Italy. After obtaining a medical degree in plastic surgery/cosmetic surgery from the University of Milan and completing his medical studies, he briefly worked as a plastic/cosmetic surgeon (for about two years). He later abandoned medicine to enter the electronics/IT/computer hardware/parts trading field, engaging in import/distribution in Europe and Asia. He founded multiple companies, such as Solo Srl (memory/DRAM distribution/non-standard DRAM trade) along with associated companies Compass, Alcosto, Freshbit, etc. In 1995, he made his first fortune selling pirated/counterfeit Microsoft software, and later was sued by Microsoft, resulting in a fine of approximately 1 million Italian lire.
By 2012, this brother had failed multiple startups and felt hopeless. He came across Bitcoin and posted online to sell 20 million pirated CDs at the price of 0.01 Bitcoin each. Miraculously, many mining geeks at the time did not know what Bitcoin was good for, and soon his 20 million CDs were sold out. After conducting deeper research, he discovered Bitcoin's decentralized and secretive attributes. He then judged that most people using Bitcoin were not legitimate or were using Bitcoin for illegitimate purposes, concluding that the future value was definitely in trading platforms. In 2013, he found a newly established crypto platform in Hong Kong, iFinex, which primarily offered leveraged trading. He invested money to become a major shareholder in this company and then established a new subsidiary, Bitfinex.
In 2013-2014, after experiencing China's ban on Bitcoin and the Mentougou crisis, Bitcoin saw huge fluctuations, rising from just a few dollars to over a thousand and then dropping back to a few hundred. Such volatility requires sufficient funds and stable anchors for everyone to feel at ease. At this time, Brock Pierce was selling Tether, and the U.S. police were looking into Pierce for anti-money laundering, even arresting several founders of cryptocurrency.
At that time, Pierce was the boss of a gaming company, trading game items online and making tens of millions. To make things easier, he founded Tether, issued USDT, and pegged it to the U.S. dollar, which was non-compliant at the time. Later, Devasini acquired this company for $500,000, and then launched Tether on his exchange, Bitfinex, marking the entry of cryptocurrencies into a new era of trading pairs beyond BTC, the era of stablecoin trading pairs. The early trading pairs were LTC/BTC and ETH/BTC. It was thought that BTC was volatile. These trading pairs were extremely unstable; even if LTC did not drop, if BTC dropped, you would profit. If BTC did not drop but rose, and LTC dropped, it would fall even more. Understanding this clarifies why current market makers use strategies to pump altcoins while switching to BTC. Using USDT as a peg, its volatility is very low, thus avoiding the aforementioned situations.
The trading logic has become cash - USDT - cryptocurrency - USDT - cash.
The emergence of Tether turned into a moving dollar used for cross-border trade. In many high-inflation countries, citizens hoarded USDT, which could be exchanged worldwide, with almost no transaction fees for cross-border trade and fast processing times.
In just a few years, he earned over 10 billion by issuing Tether, but there was nowhere to put this money. Devasini only had the option to buy U.S. treasury bonds or use it for speculation. In 2018, the company Crypto helped Bitfinex with settlements.
The account of Crypto Capital was frozen, and at that time, there were $850 million in funds that needed to be settled, but Crypto Capital could not handle it. At this point, Devasini transferred $700 million from Tether to help Bitfinex, completing the deal during the user run on the bank.
Theoretically, the assets of stablecoin companies should be pegged to the dollar and not misappropriated. During the 2017 audit, it was found that funds from Tether were misappropriated to Bitfinex. This became very obvious in 2018 when transfers between hands occurred without shareholder consent or explanation. Simply put, issuing USDT requires corresponding deposits of U.S. dollars. However, Devasini did not have enough dollars to back it, yet he was issuing USDT frantically and using the money to buy U.S. treasury bonds or help Bitfinex operate, while never being financially transparent. Due to being registered in the British Virgin Islands, sovereign countries had no means to intervene.
In 2019, the New York Attorney General revealed that Tether did not have a one-to-one reserve of U.S. dollars, nor was there a bank willing to work with Tether, at which point Devasini immediately backed down and paid a fine of $18.5 million. There is a logic behind why the U.S. is particularly concerned. The methods Tether used are exactly the same as the U.S. in the past with the $35 per ounce gold peg. The U.S. kept printing dollars, and people exchanged gold for dollars, leading to dollar overproduction and the collapse of the Brenton Woods system. Tether operates similarly, continuously issuing USDT while not having enough backed dollars, leading Americans to believe it would ultimately fail. The end result was that the global gray market discovered the benefits of USDT and began to flood in, effectively boosting Tether's progress, with the U.S. inadvertently advertising for it! All the illegal activities we can think of are using USDT.
Later, the U.S. passed the Genius Act, requiring companies licensed by the U.S. Treasury to issue stablecoins. Long before, Devasini was already thinking of self-rescue. Their assets were placed with the Wall Street investment bank Cantor, whose CEO is Lutnick, who was appointed by Trump as the U.S. Secretary of Commerce in 2023! He then acquired 5% of Tether's shares and authorized Cantor to buy U.S. treasury bonds. Tether's holdings of U.S. treasury bonds exceed $100 billion.
What the U.S. most wants to support is Circle's USDC, but they want to take down USDT even more. What will happen next, and where this Tether company that threatens U.S. hegemony will go, we shall wait and see.
