A stake in the stablecoin business
Van der Velde's wealth is tied to Tether, the company that issues USDT, a token designed to hold a value of one United States dollar and used heavily for trading and payments in the crypto markets. Tether was launched in 2014 by people linked to the Bitfinex exchange, and the two businesses have shared owners and managers ever since. Van der Velde, who runs Bitfinex, served as chief executive of Tether for most of its history and is reported to be one of its main shareholders.
Tether's business model is unusual. Users deposit dollars and receive tokens, and the company invests the reserves backing those tokens, mostly in short-term United States government debt. When interest rates rose sharply from 2022, the income on those reserves grew quickly, and Tether began reporting very large annual profits. Because the company is privately held by a small group, those profits and the value of the business accrue to a handful of people, which is how van der Velde came to be counted among the world's wealthy.
Bitfinex, the trading platform he leads, adds a second source of value, although Tether has become by far the larger enterprise.
Bitfinex, Tether and their investments
Bitfinex was founded in 2012 and became one of the busiest exchanges for trading bitcoin against dollars, with a strong following among professional traders. Van der Velde took over as chief executive in its early years and has remained in that role.
Tether has grown far beyond issuing a single token. With its profits it has built an investment arm that has taken positions in bitcoin mining, artificial intelligence computing, brain computer interface research, agriculture in South America, media and sports, including a stake in the Italian football club Juventus. It has also issued tokens linked to the euro and to gold.
In 2023 van der Velde handed the chief executive title at Tether to Paolo Ardoino, who had been chief technology officer. He stayed closely involved through his shareholding and his position at Bitfinex. The companies are registered outside the major financial centers, and much of their operations have been run from Asia and, more recently, from El Salvador, where Tether moved its headquarters after the country adopted bitcoin friendly laws.
Career before crypto
Van der Velde was born in the Netherlands in 1963. Very little about his early life has been published, and he rarely appears in public or speaks to the press. He moved to Asia early in his career and spent many years doing business in China and Hong Kong, reportedly in technology and manufacturing related ventures, before he became involved with digital currencies.
His move into crypto came at a time when the industry was small and loosely supervised. Bitfinex grew during the bitcoin boom of 2013 and the following years, and the decision to create Tether reflected a practical need: traders wanted a way to hold dollar value on exchanges without moving money back into the banking system, which was often reluctant to serve crypto firms.
Colleagues and court filings over the years describe him as a hands-on operator focused on keeping banking relationships and trading systems working under difficult conditions, rather than as a public promoter of the industry.
Regulators, controversies and public profile
Both companies have faced scrutiny. In 2016 Bitfinex suffered a large hack in which a substantial amount of bitcoin was stolen; years later United States authorities arrested a couple in New York over the theft and recovered much of the stolen coin. In 2019 the New York Attorney General accused Bitfinex and Tether of concealing a loss of customer funds held by a payment processor and of using Tether reserves to cover it. The companies settled in 2021 without admitting wrongdoing, paid a penalty and agreed to stop serving New York customers and to publish regular reserve reports.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission also fined Tether in 2021 over earlier statements about its reserves. Since then Tether has published quarterly attestations from an accounting firm and has increased the share of its reserves held in government securities.
Van der Velde keeps an exceptionally low profile. He has not built a public philanthropic record, and almost everything known about him comes from corporate documents, legal cases and statements issued by the companies he manages.