Senator Blumenthal Presses Tether Over Payments to Ex-White House Adviser's Firm

Tether is facing fresh scrutiny in the U.S. Senate. As reported by Decrypt, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, sent Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino a letter on Thursday. He is demanding records of the company's dealings with Bo Hines and Nxum, the consulting firm Hines co-founded. Tether has until Nov. 3 to respond.

Hines was executive director of the Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets and a key architect of the GENIUS Act, signed in July 2025. He left the White House on Aug. 9, 2025, and the following month Tether named him CEO of its new U.S. division.

What the WSJ reported

The letter builds on an Oct. 14 Wall Street Journal investigation. According to the Journal, Nxum has earned $6.3 million from a deal Tether struck in May 2025, under which Tether agreed to pay the marketing firm Notorious $415,000 a month. Most of the first payment went to a wallet used by Nxum, and later payments went directly to Nxum after Hines left government. The Journal says Hines kept his one-third stake in Nxum while serving in the White House.

The paper also reported that Hines urged lawmakers to extend the law's compliance window from 18 to 36 months, a change that chiefly benefited Tether. A Nxum representative said Hines wasn't involved in the Tether deal while in government and did not receive Tether-derived funds in that period. Tether said external counsel had previously conducted an internal investigation that found no evidence of wrongdoing.

Blumenthal wrote that the arrangement "implicates federal ethics, anticorruption, and lobbying laws." It is his second Tether-linked letter this month: on Oct. 8 he asked Cantor Fitzgerald, Tether's reserve custodian, for records.

For people who use USDT exchange services, the story is part of the wider debate over stablecoin regulation, including the GENIUS Act rules.