In a social media post, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino has dismissed the idea of allocating a portion of the company's profits to Ethereum, the second-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap.
Ardoino has picked Bitcoin over Ethereum due to the former's immutability and limited supply. "Bitcoin is immutable. Only 21 million coins. Easy choice," he said.
Last May, the leading stablecoin issuer announced that it would allocate 15% of its profits toward buying Bitcoin. The move was meant to strengthen and diversify the company's reserves. Back then, Ardoino described the leading cryptocurrency as "a long-term store of value with substantial growth potential."
Tomiwabold OlajideTether's most recent quarterly report showed that its Bitcoin reserves remained unchanged despite a record-breaking net profit of $1.3 billion. However, Ardoino later clarified that the leading stablecoin issuer did purchase Bitcoin via its investment arm in 2024.
This is not the first time that Ardoino has criticized Ethereum. In 2022, in the wake of the much-anticipated Merge upgrade, he stated that Ethereum was still incapable of competing with Bitcoin while also criticizing the second-largest blockchain for frequently changing its narratives.
Ether loses ground against Bitcoin
In his initial post, Ardoino pointed to Ethereum's dismal performance against Bitcoin over the past few years.
The pair is down 45% after peaking at 0.088 back in December 2021.
In May, Ethereum experienced a massive price spike following the unexpected approval of various spot ETFs. However, the flagship altcoin failed to maintain its momentum. Now, its future price action will likely depend on the amount of inflows. So far, these products have had a rather underwhelming debut (largely due to outflows recorded by Grayscale's product).
Vladislav Sopov
Tomiwabold Olajide
Dan Burgin