"There are foreign countries that are buying a lot of gold, and we believe that these countries will soon launch tokenized versions of gold as a competitive currency to the US dollar.”

— CEO, Tether
Paolo Ardoino

This statement is unusually direct for a private-sector executive. On its surface, it reads as a competitive observation about foreign monetary behavior. At a deeper level, it reveals something more consequential: a private issuer of digital money openly framing its strategy around nation-state monetary conflict. That framing is neither casual nor rhetorical. It signals participation in a geopolitical contest over the future architecture of money.