Tether has dismissed claims in a report by the Wall Street Journal that it is being investigated by New York prosecutors over whether its stablecoin has been used by third parties involved in illegal activities such as the drug trade, terrorism, and hacking to fund those activities or launder their proceeds.
According to the Journal, the probe by prosecutors at the Manhattan U.S. District Attorney’s Office comes as the Treasury Department considers imposing sanctions on Tether that could see Americans banned from using USDT due to its allegedly widespread use by individuals and groups under U.S. sanctions, including Russian arms dealers.
The report also said the Justice Department had started an investigation of the firm several years ago, looking initially at whether its backers had committed fraud by using fake documents to gain access to banking services.
Appearing at the Plan B Forum digital currency conference in the Swiss city of Lugano, Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino said it was business as usual at the firm, describing the allegations in the article as “unequivocally false.”
“At Tether, we deal regularly and directly with law enforcement officials to help prevent rogue nations, terrorists and criminals from misusing USDt,” he wrote in a post on X on Friday. “We would know if we are being investigated as the article falsely claimed.”
Meanwhile, Ardoino explained to attendees at Plan B 一 a joint venture between Lugano and Tether 一 some details of the stablecoin issuer’s reserves and its plan to roll out an AI software development kit.
He said the firm holds a total of 82,454 BTC and 48.3 tons of gold.
Ardoino previewed the peer-to-peer-powered AI software development kit that Tether plans to introduce, announcing the development on X with a link to the GitHub repository.
The new offering will enable developers to write and run code on devices from $40 mobile phones to high-end platforms equipped with H100 processors. It has modular architecture, enabling it to support multiple AI models such as Marian and Llama.
Last week, crypto exchange Coinbase launched a feature named Based Agent, which allows users to create AI agents capable of managing crypto wallets and executing various on-chain activities such as trading, swapping, and staking in under three minutes.
