Tether now holds more US government debt than the United Arab Emirates, and its co-founder Giancarlo Devasini now tops Italy’s billionaire ranking. Forbes put the former Turin plastic surgeon’s fortune at $89.3 billion in 2026, almost double the $48.8 billion of Nutella heir Giovanni Ferrero, who had led the list for nearly two decades. Devasini ranks twenty-second in the world. What pushed him so high is the $200 billion valuation attached to Tether in its latest capital raise.
Behind that figure sits a question about who controls money. It is the one raised by Daniele Damele, president of Federmanager Friuli Venezia Giulia, accountant and auditor Marco Ertman, and Francesco Greco, a manager and organizational secretary of Confael, in an analysis sent to our newsroom.
Federmanager is an Italian association of executives and managers. Confael is an Italian trade union confederation.
For the three authors, we are facing ’a worrying erosion of state sovereignty’, made possible by the short-sightedness of Western democracies.
A private creditor at the table of nations
The argument starts with Tether’s balance sheet. To keep every USDT pegged to one dollar, the company invests its reserves mainly in short-dated US Treasury securities. BDO’s attestation as of September 30, 2026 shows $122.84 billion in Treasury bills, rising to roughly $132.4 billion once overnight repurchase agreements (repos) backed by Treasury securities are counted, against $183.47 billion in tokens issued.
Set that against US Treasury data on foreign holders updated to August. Tether sits just behind South Korea, which holds $134.2 billion, and ahead of the United Arab Emirates, at $116.1 billion. Australia does not even appear among the top twenty. A private company weighs more on Washington’s debt than several sovereign states.
When the seller is not a government
Here the authors identify the sharpest asymmetry. A country that lightens its bond portfolio does so inside a web of diplomatic relationships. A massive liquidation decided autonomously by Tether could, according to Damele, Ertman and Greco, push up US interest rates and the cost of servicing the debt of the world’s leading power.
The scenario does not depend on management’s choices alone. Reserves have to follow customer redemptions, and in the week ended November 9 the USDT supply fell by $2.58 billion, dropping to $176.69 billion according to DefiLlama data. A sudden flight from the stablecoin would force rapid sales of securities, whatever the geopolitical calculation.
Shadow currency or arm of the sanctions regime
Then there is the monetary circuit. For many emerging economies and for those living at the margins of the SWIFT system, the authors note, USDT has become a shadow currency that bypasses the US Treasury’s traditional control channels and weakens sanctions as diplomatic leverage. SWIFT is the global interbank messaging network that underpins cross-border payments.
The picture is more nuanced. Tether regularly freezes addresses in coordination with OFAC, and in April it blocked $344 million across two wallets that US authorities linked to the evasion of sanctions on Iran, the largest freeze in its history.
That episode ends up reinforcing the authors’ thesis. The effectiveness of a US sanction now depends in part on the cooperation of a private company headquartered in El Salvador.
Seigniorage changes owner
The economic engine of the empire is what the authors call the privatization of seigniorage, the income that historically accrues to whoever issues money. Unlike Bitcoin, where the value generated is dispersed in open competition built on energy and computing power, Tether collects capital from savers that it does not remunerate and invests it in interest-bearing securities.
The spread lands in the company’s accounts. In the third quarter of 2026 alone Tether reported $1.5 billion in net operating profit, with a structure the Financial Times estimated in February at around 300 employees.
Who should own digital money
Governments and central banks long regarded the sector with condescension, the three authors argue, leaving a vacuum that Tether filled by collecting savings worldwide and financing US debt directly. The rules arrived late and in patchwork fashion.
In the United States, after the GENIUS Act of July 2025, Tether launched USAT, a separate stablecoin designed to operate within that framework. USDT continues to operate offshore, and in Europe it remains outside the perimeter authorized by the MiCA regulation.
The authors are not calling for crypto assets to be obstructed. The question they leave open is who, in the digital age, should receive the proceeds and the control of money.
Editor’s note
This article was originally published in Italian on money.it by Donato De Angelis on November 12, 2026 as «Tether ha più debito americano degli Emirati Arabi. Quando la finanza privata sfida la sovranità degli Stati». It has been translated and adapted for an international audience by the Money.it International desk.
