Tether, the company behind the world’s largest stablecoin USDT, today announced Tether AI, an open-source artificial intelligence platform set to launch later this year. The platform aims to merge cryptocurrency with AI technology through decentralized applications running directly on user devices.
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino revealed the initiative through a series of posts on X, describing Tether AI as “personal infinite intelligence” designed to operate without centralized control. “A fully open-source AI runtime, capable to adapt and evolve on any hardware and device.”
If Tether’s AI vision comes to fruition, then users could delegate complex cryptocurrency operations to AI agents that work seamlessly within a decentralized ecosystem. Rather than manually managing wallets, interacting with blockchain addresses, or building decentralized applications, users could simply rely on these AI agents to handle these technical aspects.
The key advantage is twofold: end users would gain access to sophisticated financial tools through intuitive AI interfaces, while developers would benefit from a common framework for creating interoperable financial applications. These applications could communicate and interact with each other directly in a peer-to-peer fashion, without depending on centralized infrastructure or intermediaries
Ardoino also said that Tether AI would require no API keys, and would offer a “fully modular and composable [wallet development kit] infused to enable USDT and Bitcoin payments.”
Tether didn’t reveal too much more, but the wallet development kit essentially provides the infrastructure for financial transactions within the Tether AI platform, allowing AI applications (like the AI Bitcoin wallet assistant) to interact securely with users’ cryptocurrency holdings while maintaining the platform’s principles of privacy and self-custody.
The announcement comes on the heels of Tether’s aggressive push into Bitcoin. Last month, the company boosted its Bitcoin reserves with a $735 million purchase, continuing its strategy of diversifying beyond stablecoins.
As recently reported by Decrypt, a SEC filing showed that Tether has also increased its stake in Bitcoin mining firm Bitdeer to 21%, further cementing its position in the crypto mining sector. And back in January, Tether said that it would bring USDT to Bitcoin and its layer-2 Lightning payments network.
Tether’s AI ambitions first surfaced in February when Ardoino previewed “Tether Data,” introducing applications like AI Translate, AI Voice Assistant, and an AI Bitcoin wallet assistant. These tools focus on user privacy by operating locally on devices rather than through cloud services.
“Tether Data’s apps will focus on working locally on any device, full privacy, self-custodial (both data and money),” Ardoino explained when first unveiling the project.
In Tether’s planned peer-to-peer AI network, agents would interact autonomously to solve practical problems while preserving privacy and decentralization. For example, while traveling abroad, you could activate your voice assistant to record a foreign hotel manager telling you the rates for a room.
Your device’s AI translate agent might connect with nearby devices to provide real-time translation services, while your AI wallet assistant simultaneously prepares appropriate cryptocurrency payments in USDT or Bitcoin based on what the translator says. These transactions would occur directly between devices without centralized servers, with all processing needs happening locally.
Of course this is just an imaginary scenario, but it’s one example of how AI agents could interact in a crypto-powered ecosystem.
The platform builds on Bare, an open source JavaScript runtime, making it compatible with a wide range of hardware devices.
In an Italian-language post, Ardoino revealed broader philosophical ambitions for the project: “Tether AI has a key objective: to be the ideal technological foundation for achieving the vision of AI described in [Isaac] Asimov’s science fiction books,” he wrote. “AI will become, in the coming decades, part of the very fabric of the universe.”
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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