Behind the Money: Tether’s path to the spotlight
FT News Briefing
Forhecz Topher
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 5 June 2022
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Behind the Money, our in-depth business podcast, has just relaunched! We wanted to share one of our most recent episodes. Follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or Acast.
On this episode, we’re diving back into the world of stablecoins for part 2 of 2 in our miniseries on crypto. This time, it’s a story filled with troubled companies and a real life fire that sends a business up in smoke. With the help of FT reporters Kadhim Shubber and Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan, we dig into the professional histories of two executives who sit atop two of crypto’s most important businesses: stablecoin issuer Tether and exchange Bitfinex.
Clips courtesy CSPAN
For further reading:
Tether’s CEO: from IT sales to calling the shots in crypto land
Tether: the former plastic surgeon behind the crypto reserve currency
On Twitter, follow FT reporters Kadhim Shubber (@Kadhim), Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan (@SVR13) and Ethan Wu (@EthanYWu)
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The FT News Briefing is supported by Equinole, the UK's energy partner. |
| 0:06.4 | Learn more at equinole.co.uk |
| 0:11.5 | Last year, two financial times reporters, |
| 0:14.6 | Katam Shiber and Sid Van Katarama-Krishnan started looking into this cryptocurrency company, |
| 0:20.9 | called Tether. As we discussed in our previous episode, Tether issues what's called a stablecoin. |
| 0:28.8 | Stablecoins are supposed to help investors move easily from traditional currency |
| 0:33.2 | like US dollars into crypto. What's significant about Tether is that it's the biggest stablecoin |
| 0:40.4 | in circulation. Stablecoins and Tether in particular are the lubricant for the crypto economy. |
| 0:47.5 | That's Katam speaking. And because Tether is so big, he and Sid wanted to learn more about |
| 0:54.0 | who runs the company. One person they started looking at is Giancarlo Devacini. |
| 1:00.8 | He's the chief financial officer for Tether. He's also the CFO of another company that's |
| 1:07.2 | a major crypto marketplace called Bitfinex. Of course, if you want to learn more about someone, |
| 1:14.8 | why not look at the bio on their website? Giancarlo's bio on the Bitfinex site is pretty detailed. |
| 1:22.2 | Before reaching the heights of the crypto world, for example, he started this company called |
| 1:27.3 | Solo in 1997. His bio says that Solo became the parent company to a collection of firms. |
| 1:35.3 | They sold things like memory chips, DVDs, and other tech hardware. His bio says his group of businesses |
| 1:43.5 | grew to 113 million euros in revenue. And then it says shortly before the financial crisis hit |
| 1:51.2 | in 2008, Giancarlo sold Solo and retired. But when Katam and Sid tracked down documents from 2007 |
| 1:59.8 | about these businesses, they found a different story. These companies were not sort of on the |
| 2:07.5 | up and up. The documents we had said that they've been hit by following memory chip prices. |
| 2:13.7 | They've been significant in restructuring. And the bank's money and the banks wouldn't |
| 2:18.4 | extend the loans. But there was an even bigger revelation that didn't line up with his Bitfinex bio. |
... |
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