Tether (USDT) is no longer just another stablecoin. It’s a $157 billion shadow dollar that processes $19 billion in criminal transactions each year — and yet the U.S. government just turned it into official policy.
In this episode of RegTech Real Talk, we trace the story from Russian cybercrime towers to Washington D.C., uncovering how a shell company with 150 employees became one of America’s largest creditors by buying U.S. Treasuries — and why criminals and governments alike now depend on the same rails.
What we cover:
How Tether enables money laundering for Russian hackers, drug gangs, and scam compounds
How Washington embraced stablecoins as a tool for U.S. dollar dominance
Why Trump’s administration celebrated the same infrastructure investigators call a compliance nightmare
The red flags AML teams should watch for when clients use Tether and stablecoins
Why “shadow banking” is no longer underground — it’s officially sanctioned
For compliance teams, fintechs, and anyone watching the future of money, this is the story of how financial borders died — and how the same digital dollars serve families, fraudsters, and foreign policy at the same time.
🔗 Compliance deep dive: Anqa Blog — What Compliance Teams Need to Know About Tether (USDT)
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