Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, is throwing out some seriously wild predictions. According to him, machine-to-machine commerce is about to blow up, and the USDT stablecoin and Bitcoin are going to be at the very heart of it.
Ardoino boldly stated that within 15 years, we’ll have a trillion AI agents using blockchain-based assets for trade settlements. Yep, you heard it right, one trillion. “Every AI agent will need a wallet,” he said, and naturally, it’ll be self-custodial. Can you imagine a trillion bots all managing their own wallets? That’s the future, at least according to Ardoino. And forget about old-school financial giants like JPMorgan jumping on the bot bandwagon. They're not interested in banking AI agents.
Stablecoins
AI agents, those autonomous bots, are poised to become the backbone of a maturing digital economy, and they’re expected to rely heavily on cryptocurrencies to make transactions. While humans are still figuring out how to trust bots, Ardoino’s not waiting around. He pointed to Tether’s wallet-development kit (WDK), launched last November, as the tool that’ll make non-custodial wallets a breeze for AI agents.
“I don’t think JPMorgan will open a bank account for any AI agent,” Ardoino quipped.
So, in his mind, the future’s going to be all about stablecoins and Bitcoin for bot-to-bot payments. And he’s not wrong, USDT is already a fan favorite among crypto traders.
In fact, a recent U.S. Treasury Department report pointed out that most crypto transactions go through stablecoins. Right now, there’s over $243 billion worth of U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins out there, and a whopping $155 billion of that is USDT.
But it’s not all just talk. Ardoino’s vision aligns with a pivotal moment for the sector, with Congress considering two stablecoin bills that could pass by the end of summer. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent even hinted that clear stablecoin regulations could push the sector’s value past $2 trillion by 2028.
Tether isn’t just sitting back, either. The company recently made moves in the AI world. It opened a new headquarters in El Salvador and, in April 2024, launched Tether Data to support open-source AI models. Then, in May, the company introduced Tether AI, which, according to Ardoino, will “enable an unstoppable peer-to-peer network of billions of AI agents.” Sounds like Tether’s got big plans for the future, and it looks like they might just pull it off.
Jordan V.
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