On September 24, 2025, Bloomberg reported that Tether Holdings, the world's largest stablecoin issuer, is in talks with investors for a new round of funding, planning to sell a 3% stake to raise $150-200 billion.

If calculated at the upper limit, this transaction would bring Tether's valuation to around $5 trillion, making it one of the most valuable private companies in the world.

What does a $5 trillion valuation mean?

For comparison, as of March this year, OpenAI was valued at around $3 trillion, and SpaceX at around $4.5 trillion. Tether's target valuation of $5 trillion even exceeds the combined market capitalization of two Wall Street giants, Goldman Sachs at $2.16 trillion and Blackstone at $1.48 trillion.

However, what is truly striking is not the company's valuation itself, but the individuals behind this number.

Those who directly or indirectly hold Tether shares, if the deal goes through, may become the richest group of people in the history of the cryptocurrency industry.

As a privately held company registered in the British Virgin Islands, Tether has never voluntarily disclosed its ownership structure. This company, controlling a circulating supply of $170 billion USDT and almost monopolizing the global cryptocurrency trading infrastructure, has always kept its actual controllers in the shadows.

It wasn't until 2021 that the New York Attorney General's Office and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) investigation files unexpectedly exposed some ownership information; in 2024, the well-known U.S. media Forbes further supplemented this puzzle through multiple sources.

Based on these fragmented but relatively reliable pieces of information, we can finally sketch out the wealth map behind Tether.

Based on the $5 trillion valuation, the largest shareholder of Tether, a 61-year-old Italian, would possess over $2 trillion in wealth, surpassing Buffett to become the world's fifth richest person.

While several other core shareholders will also enter the billionaire or centi-billionaire club.

These long-time invisible super-rich individuals finally have specific names and faces. Among them are a former plastic surgeon, a programmer who codes until the early hours of the morning, a Dutchman who learned Chinese in Taiwan, and even a Chinese businessman currently serving a prison sentence.

Behind each person is a little-known story of wealth accumulation.

Chairman: From Plastic Surgeon to Top Five Global Billionaire