The internet loves a good conspiracy theory, especially when it involves Tether — the perpetual boogeyman of crypto Twitter. This week, rumors swirled that the world’s largest stablecoin issuer was dumping its Bitcoin bags to chase shiny metal. But Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino wasn’t having it.
In a Sunday post on X, Ardoino flatly denied the speculation, stating the company “didn’t sell any Bitcoin.” Instead, he reaffirmed Tether’s strategy of taking excess profits and parking them in hard assets: Bitcoin, gold, and — in a move that would make any prepper proud — land.
Ardoino flatly denied the speculation, Source: X
Where the Rumor Came From
The drama kicked off when YouTuber Clive Thompson claimed that Tether’s quarterly attestations showed a Bitcoin sell-off. According to his math, Tether’s BTC stash shrank from 92,650 BTC in Q1 to 83,274 BTC in Q2 of 2025. Cue the Twitter panic: was Tether secretly offloading coins while everyone else was stacking sats?
Not quite. Samson Mow, CEO of Jan3 and longtime Bitcoin evangelist, stepped in with a reality check. He explained that Tether had simply shifted 19,800 BTC to Twenty One Capital (XXI) — a new Bitcoin-native financial platform run by Strike’s Jack Mallers. That included 14,000 BTC in June and another 5,800 in July. Translation: coins moved, not dumped.
Mow even pointed out that, if you account for the transfer, Tether actually increased its net holdings. Ardoino backed this up, calling the rumors FUD and reiterating that Tether remains one of the biggest institutional Bitcoin whales on the planet.
The Bigger Picture: Tether’s War Chest
As of now, Tether controls more than 100,521 BTC, worth around $11.17 billion, according to BitcoinTreasuries.net. That puts it in the same league as Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy and even some sovereign nations. Tether’s balance sheet has become less about boring bonds and more about building an apocalypse-resistant vault of hard money. Bitcoin for growth, gold for tradition, and land for permanence.
And let’s be real — Tether is playing a nation-state game. When Ardoino says the world is “getting darker” and they’re hedging with safe assets, that’s not just PR fluff. It’s an acknowledgment that the dollar — the very thing Tether’s USDT stablecoin is pegged to — is looking shakier long-term.
Meanwhile in El Salvador…
Adding fuel to the narrative, El Salvador announced it just purchased 13,999 troy ounces of gold (roughly $50 million worth), its first gold buy since 1990. This comes on top of its $700 million Bitcoin stack (6,292 BTC). The timing is interesting: while Tether denies selling Bitcoin to buy gold, a Bitcoin nation-state actually is doing that kind of diversification.
The IMF, of course, was quick to note that El Salvador hasn’t bought any new Bitcoin since February. But gold? Perfectly respectable in their eyes. It shows the split in playbooks: old-world institutions keep blessing gold, while the Bitcoin crowd keeps stacking digital gold. Tether, being a shape-shifter between TradFi and crypto, is hedging both ways.
The Takeaway
Tether’s denial isn’t just about clearing the air on one YouTuber’s hot take — it’s about signaling confidence in their Bitcoin-first strategy. If anything, the move to fund XXI with nearly 20,000 BTC shows Tether is going beyond passive balance sheet management and actively seeding Bitcoin-native infrastructure.
Call it paranoid prepping, call it balance sheet brilliance — either way, Tether isn’t dumping its Bitcoin. It’s entrenching itself deeper into the hard-money bunker.
Source: https://bravenewcoin.com/insights/tether-shoots-down-bitcoin-sell-off-rumors-doubles-down-on-btc-gold-and-land
