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As Tether has grown exponentially over the years, it has also altered the composition of what provides backing for every one of its tokens. In some quarters, this has been perceived as positive, particularly the fact that the company has moved away from commercial paper of unknown quality into US treasuries and repo markets.
However, Tether also has a variety of ‘other investments’ — many of which have been shared publicly on its Crunchbase profile.
Celsius Network
Tether’s first investment was in the now-defunct crypto lending platform Celsius. Run by Alex Mashinsky and his cronies, the lending company declared bankruptcy after collapsing under the weight of its own poorly enacted market manipulation and fraud.
Tether made an announcement in 2022 that stated, “Tether’s portfolio does include an investment in Celsius,” but added that the investment was actually for shareholder equity and that there was “no correlation between this investment and Tether’s own reserves or stability.”
Tether also revealed a loan provided to Celsius in the announcement. Celsius raised nearly $1 billion in funding before it collapsed and Tether is listed as one of only a handful of lead investors.
Exordium
Exordium is the web3 gaming company created by the former CSO of Blockstream, Samson Mow. Exordium’s investors include Disrupt Ventures — a fellow investor in Celsius Network. Their only IP is a video game called Infinite Fleet, which is a Star Citizen-esque game that incorporates its own token. The company has only raised $5.4 million so the amount Tether put into the company is minimal, even as lead investor.
Bitrefill
Bitrefill is an early website devoted to selling gift cards and other products for cryptocurrency. Investors include Litecoin creator Charlie Lee, Tim Draper’s Draper Associates, and Fulgur Ventures. Similar to Exordium, Bitrefill has only raised $9.5 million, a minuscule amount from Tether’s reserves.
NAKA
NAKA is a financial services company almost exclusively working with individuals and organizations involved with crypto. The CEO and co-founder of NAKA is Dejan Roljic, a Slovenian who’s been involved with crypto for many years now — including a 2018 ICO called Eligma, which raised $7.2 million.
While Eligma had bold goals of merchant adoption, AI-driven item discovery, and other absurd claims, it appears to simply do software development work now. Meanwhile, NAKA has raised nearly $50 million, with over $20 million of that coming from Tether and Bitfinex.
Volcano Energy
With only one investor — Tether — Volcano Energy, an El Salvadoran geothermal energy company with support from the Bukele government, looks to have raised approximately $250 million from Tether. This makes it one of Tether’s larger investments, which makes a lot of sense considering its close ties to Nayib Bukele and the Salvadoran government.
The company aims to take advantage of the volcanic hotspots in El Salvador to mine bitcoin, with some miners beginning to run in October of last year — there have been no real updates since. Laughably, the CEO, CSO, and chairman (well-known Bitcoin maximalist and former Russian TV star Max Keiser) have no experience in the energy industry — though help from numerous international conglomerates, including ChinaPower, will likely help with that.
In a reply to Ethereum World News, a spokesperson for Tether apparently claimed that the company’s reserves wouldn’t be used for this investment, but how that would be possible is unclear.
Read more: Explained: El Salvador’s contentious bitcoin-backed Volcano Bonds
Northern Data Group
Northern Data is a bitcoin mining company that has also pivoted to trying to use its energy contracts and data centers for artificial intelligence. It has been reported that Tether owns the majority of this firm. Former executives have alleged the firm engaged in securities fraud and tax evasion.
Northern Data is reportedly considering an IPO of its AI unit, though Northern Data stated it could neither confirm or deny those rumors.
Read more: Tether-owned Northern Data accused of fraud by former execs
Academy of Digital Industries
A Georgian education company that received almost no money from Tether, with the stablecoin only investing $40,000 in it according to Crunchbase. Tether appears to have used this investment as more of a PR coup than anything else: the minimal investment allowed it to post an announcement stating it was supporting blockchain and cryptocurrency education globally, while also advertising ‘Mastering the Blockchain’ courses that were being held at the conference it co-hosts in Lugano.
Tickets to the conference range in price from $170 to $1,700.
Oobit
A Lithuanian-based company that was founded by Israelis, Oobit raised $3 million in 2020, followed by a $25 million raise in February of this year. Investors in the company include big names in the crypto industry, from Tether to Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko and 468 Capital.
The company is looking to make crypto easier for both consumers and merchants to use by converting it to cash as soon as it’s transferred to a merchant. This is likely something that Tether plans to help with and benefit from.
Read more: Is Tether becoming Bitcoin’s most influential miner?
Satellogic
Satellogic is a Caribbean-Uruguayan company that has gotten into the satellite launch business. Between 2013 and 2020, launches for the company almost exclusively took place in China and Russia, but since then, the company has been working with SpaceX to launch from the US.
Additionally, Satellogic laid off workers last year, lowered expectations around the number of forthcoming launches, and sought out new investors because of financial difficulties. After this announcement, Tether came to the rescue by allowing the company to essentially borrow money.
The company currently trades on the Nasdaq exchange for around a dollar.
CityPay.io
CityPay.io is a Georgian company specializing in crypto payments. Of the $2.8 million that it has raised, $2.1 million has come from Tether.
The drive to bring more users to Tether in countries with higher poverty and unemployment than Western nations has likely led to it prioritizing investment in CityPay.io. Georgia has not seen an unemployment rate below 10% since the early ’90s and its poverty rate hovers persistently around 15-20%.
Bitdeer Technologies Group
Run by (in)famous early bitcoin miner Jihan Wu, who came on board as CEO of the company in January of this year, Bitdeer Technologies Group is a NASDAQ-listed cryptocurrency mining group.
Tether invested an impressive $100 million into the company a few months ago, pouring many times more value into it than it had ever received before. Unfortunately, since that raise, the publicly traded company has remained incredibly volatile and its stock has traded anywhere between $14 and $3.20 over the past year.
XREX
XREX identifies as ‘a blockchain-enabled financial institution’ that offers ‘enterprise-grade banking to SMBs and novice-friendly financial services to individuals globally.’ Tether invested $18.75 million in the firm, with the announcement stating it hopes this partnership will “facilitate USDT-based cross-border payments in emerging markets.”
Further, the announcement highlights that XREX can apparently lead to new “solutions to detect and prevent illicit use of stablecoins.”
In sum, these investments show how Tether has expanded its role in the ecosystem, funding a variety of different projects across many different verticals, all while receiving fewer audits than FTX.