A group of four people controlled 86% of the stablecoin publisher Tether Holdings Limited in 2018, according to documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal in connection with the investigation of the United States authorities.
The New York Attorney General and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission investigated Tether in 2021 revealing a previously unknown ownership structure. The company is the issuer of Tether (USDT), the world’s largest stablecoin with a circulation of $68 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.
According to the document, Tether was built by the joint efforts of former plastic surgeon Giancarlo Devasini and former child actor and crypto entrepreneur Brock Pierce. In September 2014, Tether Holdings was incorporated in the British Virgin Islands.
Four years later, Pierce has left the company and Devasini owns about 43% of Tether. Devasini also helped build the crypto exchange Bitfinex, where he is currently the chief financial officer. Bitfinex CEO Jean-Louis van Der Velde and chief counsel Stuart Hoegner each owned about 15% of Tether in 2018, according to the filing.
The fourth largest shareholder of Tether in 2018 is a person with dual citizenship, known as Christopher Harborne in England and Chakrit Sakunkrit in Thailand, who owns 13%.
Through their own holdings and other related companies, the four men control about 86% of Tether, the report said.
Tether’s chief technology officer Paolo Ardoino tweeted that the Journal piece was a “clown article” that would boost the company’s growth:
The more clown the article the more tether grows. People know that Tether stands for freedom and inclusion. This is troubling the MSM.
Eventually the holepunch will destroy the media as well.— Paolo Ardoino (@paoloardoino) February 2, 2023
According to a Tether spokesperson, Ardoino’s post is the company’s official response to the article. In November 2022, another article stated that Tether could be considered “technically bankrupt” if its assets fell by 0.3%. The company labeled the article as “false information.”
Link to WSJ pic.twitter.com/ESGblkrO7b
— Paolo Ardoino (@paoloardoino) February 2, 2023
A settlement between Tether and the New York Attorney General’s office was reached in 2021 after the company was accused of misrepresenting the amount of fiat collateral backing the stablecoin. In addition to paying $18.5 million in damages to the state of New York, the company must submit periodic disclosures about its reserves, Cointelegraph reported.