Tether Shocks Crypto Crowd With Sudden AI Power Play—Because Stablecoins Weren’t Controversial Enough

Tether—the $83B stablecoin giant best known for printing USDT like a central bank on espresso—just dropped a bombshell: it’s launching ’Tether.AI’ to dive headfirst into artificial intelligence.

Why? Because nothing says ’trust us’ like mixing algorithmic black boxes with dollar-pegged tokens.

The move blindsided an industry still reeling from Sam Altman’s crypto ambitions. Details? Scarce. Roadmap? Vague. But with Tether’s history of opaque reserves and regulatory skirmishes, expect fireworks.

One hedge fund manager quipped: ’Finally, a way to lose 1:1 dollar parity AND hallucinate fake transactions simultaneously.’

Tether AI, according to Ardoino, is a “fully open-source AI runtime, capable of adapting and evolving on any hardware and device, no API keys, no central point of failure, fully modular and composable, WDK-infused to enable USDT and Bitcoin payments.”

WDK is Tether’s Wallet Development Kit, a modular software development kit that enables businesses and developers to integrate non-custodial wallets and user experiences for Bitcoin and USDT across any app, website, or device, Ardoino explained in a November post on X.

On its Tether.ai website, Tether says its AI platform will integrate Keet, a peer-to-peer chat platform. Not much else is known about Tether’s AI initiative.

CoinGecko’s index of AI tokens is trading flat after the announcement.