Paolo Ardoino (Bitfinex/Tether) – Managing the growth of Tether (EP.87)

So far on the crypto-dollarization miniseries, we've covered Tether's stability mechanics, we've heard from traders and OTC desks using the asset, but we haven't heard from the issuers of the stablecoin itself. To give us insight into how they run the system, Paolo Ardoino, the CTO of Tether and Bitfinex, joins the show. In this episode:

• The factors behind the outflow of BTC and inflow of ETH to Bitfinex
• Fork futures for ETH 2.0?
• Bitfinex' policy on staking on behalf of users
• The principal-agent problem inherent in exchange staking
• Whether the growth of crypto dollars threatens native collateral like BTC and ETH
• Paolo's explanation for the growth of tether after March 12th 2020
• The advantages of cryptodollars over the current financial system
• Why Tether opted to list on 7 different blockchains (note: this was recorded before Tether listed on OmiseGo)
• Paolo's view on the claims that Tether is clogging Ethereum
• How Tether Gold works
• Could Tether go from $9b to $100b – what the constraints to scaling are
• Tether's ability and willingness to surveil transations
• Tether's business model in a negative rate world
• How Paolo deals with the pressure of being the public figurehead for Tether

Stay up to date on the growth of Tether's capitalization here.