Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.

It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world.

What's going on, guys? It is Wednesday, September 24th, and today we are talking about Tethers Monster

fundraise. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it,

give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation,

come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit.ly

slash breakdown pod. Well, friends, AI has been having altogether too much fun relative to the world of valuations and big

investments and investor focus. And Tether has now kicked down the door and said, no, thank you.

You don't get all the money. Yes, Tether is reportedly seeking external funding at a massive

half a trillion dollar valuation. Bloomberg reports that Tether is cour seeking external funding at a massive half a trillion dollar valuation.

Bloomberg reports that Tether is courting outside investors for the first time and reportedly

looking to raise between 15 and 20 billion in exchange for 3% of the company, making their

implied valuation 500 billion.

Cantor Fitzgerald is acting as the lead advisor and selling the deal, extending their

relationship with Tether even further. Cantor is, of course, the investment bank that used to have Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik as its CEO. They've also been managing some unknown portion of Tether's reserves for at least the past year. One of the sources for the report did note that the numbers involved in the deal were top-end targets and eventually could come in lower. The deal is reportedly in the earliest

stages, so all the details are subject to change. Still, the deal does seem to be real in something

that CEO Paulo Arduino is happy to speak about. On Tuesday, he tweeted, Tether is evaluating

a raise from a selected group of high-profile key investors to maximize the scale of the company's

strategy across all existing and new business lines. Stable coins,

distribution, ubiquity, AI, commodity trading, energy communications, media, by several orders

of magnitude. The tweet concluded with three pawn emojis in case that means anything about the chess

game that Paolo is partaking in. He also signed off with Tether, the stable company, which is a

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