Washington has a $114 trillion reason for wanting to keep the Tether .

What's going on?

On September 23, Bloomberg reported that the Trump administration is considering a plan to promote stablecoins overseas, including the possibility of joint ventures with private companies in which the Treasury Department, State Department and US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) may be involved.

The report is not a deal with Tether, and the plan hasn't been announced as an actual project yet. But Tether is key to understanding why this proposal would be interesting for Washington.

Why this is interesting: because Tether has been modified before.

In October 2021, the CFTC ordered Tether to pay a $41 million fine for misrepresenting funds backing USDT between 2016 and 2019, which were allegedly backed by fiat currencies held in bank accounts, but the regulator found other holdings.

Then the reserve structure changed, and in October 2022, Tether announced that it was selling out of commercial paper and switching to U.S. Treasury notes instead.

Figures to know (data as of 30 June)

• USDT accounts for over 60% of the stablecoin market (according to company data).
• $114.96 billion in direct T-bills with an average life expectancy of less than 90 days.
• Total reserve assets are $187.75 billion, debt is $183.64 billion and there's a surplus of $4.11 billion.
• Reverse repos, short-term overnight repayments of $18.63 billion.
• Metals are worth $18.84 billion, Bitcoin is $5.80 billion, loans have a collateral value of $13.45 billion.
• Two-quarter operating profit of about $1.50 billion, mostly from Treasury interest and repos.

Additionally, on August 13, Tether announced that KPMG US was reviewing the 2025 budget and issued an unqualified opinion.

How does this relate to users in Thailand and Myanmar?

Tether makes money from a back-up port because users around the world want "accessible dollars" without opening an American bank account, which includes users in regions where local currencies fluctuate. For users in Myanmar, where domestic financial systems have difficulty accessing dollars, USDT has become a widespread dollar-denominated asset reference platform.

The IMF has explained that foreign exchange stablecoins can replace local currencies for saving and doing business in countries experiencing inflation or currency fluctuations, which becomes an issue between "household financial independence" and "central bank monetary policy control".

Limitations that should be understood.

• Buying USDT from someone else isn't sending new money to Tether, it's just transferring an existing token.
• Short-term purchases of T-bills don't mean that tether will fund the U.S. government in the long run, because a port must be ready to pay back its token holders at any time.
• Tether's centralized design is not exempt from issuer control. As of December 2023, Tether has a voluntary policy prohibiting the use of tokens under U.S. securities laws, even if holders retain their private keys.

Fed Governor Stephen Miran said in a November 2025 speech that demand from foreign savers with limited access to dollars is a greater opportunity than the movement of money from one place to another by Americans, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent outlined this policy objective in his statement on the GENIUS Act July 2025, linking stablecoins to dollar economy access and mandated treasuries.

So this relationship is two-way: Washington gets the big debt buyers and dollar distribution networks without doing anything about it, while Tether receives revenue from assets that support trust in its own products.