Tether CEO Calls for More Investment in Decentralized Tech After Global Outage

• Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino urges investment in decentralized tech after a global outage caused by CrowdStrike’s centralized software issue.
• CrowdStrike confirmed the outage was a technical glitch, not a cyberattack, and assured that a fix had been deployed.
• Ardoino highlights the need for decentralization, citing Tether’s investment in Holepunch to build resilient, non-centralized systems.

Paolo Ardoino, the CEO of Tether, called for increased funding for decentralized peer-to-peer systems. This outage, which caused widespread disruption, was caused by an issue with CrowdStrike’s central software. Numerous businesses and organizations throughout the world experienced difficulties due to Windows systems’ Blue Screen of Death (BSOD).

CrowdStrike’s CEO, George Kurtz, confirmed that the problem was not a cyberattack but a technical glitch. He stated, “The issue has been identified, isolated, and a fix has been deployed.” Kurtz assured that CrowdStrike would provide updates through its support portal and urged affected organizations to communicate through official channels.

The Case for Decentralization

Ardoino criticized the reliance on centralized systems, suggesting that the outage highlights the fragility of today’s infrastructure. He argued that the internet’s current heavy centralization around a few major companies makes global systems vulnerable. According to Ardoino, “Concentration and centralization create a fragile world where technology can fail at the first sign of change.”

In response to this vulnerability, Ardoino emphasized the need for investment in decentralized technologies. He pointed to Tether’s involvement in Holepunch, a platform designed to build apps without centralized data storage. Ardoino highlighted that Tether and Holepunch are working to create systems that are resilient enough to withstand disruptions.

Broader Implications and New Developments

The outage has amplified calls from the crypto community for more robust decentralized solutions. Gabor Gurbacs, the founder of PointsVille, repeated this sentiment, stating, “The world’s infrastructure is migrating to robust, decentralized, and non-custodial rails.” He noted that ensuring resilience in financial and industrial systems is becoming essential.

Furthermore, Tether has named Philip Gradwell, the former head of Chainalysis’s economics department, as its new head of economics. Gradwell will be in charge of Tether’s usage study of USDT and regulatory relations. He will be interacting with U.S. federal agencies and examining the magnitude of USDT’s international trading.