Tether CEO riled up by suggestion USDT is a target of US government

Tether USDT +0.11% CEO Paolo Ardoino posted a lengthy diatribe to X on Monday in an apparent effort to rail against any notions that his company's stablecoin is insecure in any way.

"An uniformed CEO, leading a company being investigated by the SEC, launching a competitive stablecoin ... is being reported spreading fear about USDT," Ardoino said in his post .

Ardoino failed to name the CEO in question, but all signs appear to point to Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse. Ripple is engaged in a lawsuit with the Securities and Exchange Commission and also recently announced it would be launching its own stablecoin, which will be in direct competition with Tether's USDT coin, the world's largest by market share.

Garlinghouse, while speaking on a podcast posted to YouTube last Thursday, said: "The U.S. government is going after Tether. That is clear to me."

"I view Tether as a very important part of the ecosystem," he also said.

While Garlinghouse's comments appear to suggest that he is not against Tether, his sentiments echoed those of Ripple CTO David Schwartz, who, while speaking about his company's launch of its own stablecoin in April, told The Block that "Tether is almost a no-go" for his company "because of the regulatory issues," adding that "there's just so much uncertainty around" Tether's stablecoin.

Schwartz said the cross-border payments company had used Circle's USDC stablecoin in the past. He also said Ripple probably should have launched its own stablecoin sooner.

Garlinghouse and Schwartz's comments may seem like thinly veiled attacks on Tether's stablecoin, which currently has a market cap of nearly $111 billion, according to The Block Price Page .

“We wish Ripple’s team will have more success with their new stablecoin than they've had so far," a Tether spokesperson told The Block. Ripple declined to comment.

Tether CEO clapping back

Ardoino clapping back against any perceived negativity regarding USDT is nothing new. In February, Tether's CEO called JPMorgan "hypocritical" after the bank's analysts said USDT suffers from a "lack of regulatory compliance and transparency" and, therefore, its dominant market position is a negative for crypto.

Garlinghouse appears to have assumed Ardoino was, in fact, talking about him in his post because Ripple's CEO responded to the tweet. "I wasn’t attacking Tether," he said. "My point was that the US government has clearly indicated they want more control over USD-backed stablecoin issuers, and thus, Tether, as the largest player, is in their line of sight."