Paolo Ardoino is making it clear that Tether isn’t backing away from Bitcoin despite the rumors. Over the weekend, the Tether CEO pushed back on claims that the stablecoin giant had been selling off its BTC stash to buy gold.
The confusion came from YouTuber Clive Thompson, who cited Tether’s Q1 and Q2 2025 attestations from BDO. On paper, Tether’s reported Bitcoin position dropped from 92,650 BTC in Q1 to 83,274 BTC in Q2. Thompson took this as evidence of a sell-off. But that narrative quickly unraveled once Samson Mow, CEO of Jan3, pointed out that around 19,800 BTC had simply been transferred to Twenty One Capital (XXI), a separate Tether-backed initiative.
The transfers, 14,000 BTC in June and 5,800 BTC in July, were part of a major $3.9 billion allocation to XXI, a Bitcoin-native financial platform led by Strike CEO Jack Mallers. Mow noted that if you factor those BTC back into Tether’s books, the company actually ended Q2 with more Bitcoin than Q1. Ardoino confirmed this, emphasizing that the coins weren’t sold but reallocated within Tether’s broader strategy.
That strategy, according to Ardoino, remains steady: funneling profits into what he called “safe assets” like Bitcoin, gold, and even land. Current data from BitcoinTreasuries.NET shows Tether holding 100,521 BTC—valued at roughly $11.17 billion at today’s prices.
The timing of the speculation was striking, since El Salvador also announced a diversification move last week, adding nearly $50 million worth of gold to its reserves, the first such purchase since 1990. The country already holds about 6,292 BTC as part of its high-profile Bitcoin experiment.
The takeaway: far from trimming exposure, Tether is doubling down on Bitcoin while broadening into other hard assets. For Ardoino, it’s not about choosing between BTC and gold, but about hedging against what he calls “a darker world” with a diversified store of value strategy.
