Tether's chairman Giancarlo Devasini would become the fifth-richest person after firm's $20 billion raise

Tether is looking for a deal that would push its valuation to $500 billion, and if that happens, Giancarlo Devasini would end up with a net worth of $224 billion, putting him ahead of Warren Buffett, right behind Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, and Mark Zuckerberg.

This info came from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and it’s based on what Devasini would pocket from his ownership stake if Tether Holdings pulls this off and becomes one of the most valuable private companies on the planet.

As Cryptopolitan reported earlier, the stablecoin giant, headquartered in El Salvador, is trying to raise somewhere between $15 billion and $20 billion by selling about 3% of the company in a private placement.

Tether’s leadership would become richer than every other crypto billionaire

If the company hits that half-trillion number, Paolo Ardoino, who took over as CEO in late 2023, would walk away with around $95 billion. So would former CEO Jean-Louis van der Velde. Another shareholder, Stuart Hoegner, would take home over $60 billion.

That means all four of them would jump past Changpeng Zhao, the Binance founder who’s sitting on $52 billion. Jeremy Allaire, co-founder of Circle, the company behind USDC, doesn’t even come close, as he’s at $2.6 billion.

The bank running point on the deal is Cantor Fitzgerald. The firm isn’t just advising. It manages Tether’s reserves and also holds a convertible bond issued by the company. If this placement closes, Cantor gets paid on all sides.

Tether’s profits exploded as USDT circulation soared

The valuation isn’t just smoke. USDT, Tether’s dollar-pegged stablecoin, is the biggest one out there with a market value of $172 billion. Its growth has been tied directly to profits. As more tokens get issued and interest rates stay high, the company earns more off its reserve assets.

In a July blog post, Tether said it earned $4.9 billion in Q2 alone. The company also wrote in its transparency report that it paid out $7.4 billion in dividends in the first half of the year. So, yeah, the money’s real.

The people behind this company didn’t come from Wall Street. Giancarlo, now 61, used to be a plastic surgeon in Italy, but dropped the scalpel after two years. He started flipping DVDs and memory chips, then got into crypto through Bitfinex, an exchange he invested in. He ended up running it.

Later, he joined forces with Brock Pierce (former child actor) and Reeve Collins to launch Tether back in 2014. Giancarlo eventually bought out their shares.

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