The Twitter account belonging to Van der Velde, the CEO of Tether, was disconnected after a report questioning the USDT reserves.
The CEO of Tether and Bitfinex, Jan Ludovicus van der Velde, suddenly vanished from Twitter after a Bloomberg investigation that focused on the reserves that backed the stablecoin USDT, issued by the company, came to light.
The report revealed by Bloomberg questions the support and transparency of the company. The company maintains that USDT receives backup from questionable assets, including billions of dollars in short-term loans from large Chinese companies.
The company has been under scrutiny for several years due to its reserves and other questionable items.
Now, shortly after the latest report that casts doubt on Tether’s multi-million dollar reserves, another news agency reports that the Twitter account belonging to the company’s supposed CEO has disappeared.
Van der Velde’s account, under the username @urwhatuknow, got deleted after the news arrived.
Who is the CEO of Tether?
There is a possibility that van der Velde anticipated events by deleting his Twitter account after learning about the Bloomberg investigation. For the story, journalist Zeke Faux and a team from Bloomberg contacted Tether’s top executives, although the CEO did not comment.
Stuart Hoegner is Tether’s current attorney. He said that Van der Velde and Devasini prefer to avoid the limelight, According to Faux. He also described Van der Velde as a Dutchman living in Hong Kong, and it seems he never gave an interview or spoke at a conference.
Despite his role as CEO behind the issuing company of the world’s largest stable coin, there are very few public statements from van der Velde. He has barely spoken to a couple of outlets regarding investigations into the company and has remained relatively under a mysterious veil.
CTO Paolo Ardoino has been the company’s representative (who is also the CTO of Bitfinex). Ardoino has made an appearance in various interviews and has repeatedly denied the allegations surrounding Tether. He has also excused the CEO for his absence.
Other Interesting Elements in the Tether case
The last comments of the executive come from 2018. That year, van der Velde reportedly communicated by email with the medium Business Insider to deny the allegations that Tether had played a role in the growth of the Bitcoin market.
A Bitfinex blog post from 2017 highlighted that van der Velde joined the company as a co-founder and CEO in 2013.
That post also describes Vander Velde as a serial technologist and entrepreneur who had gathered 30 years of experience in the international high-tech industry. A file on the company’s website shows an image of an executive.
Van der Velde’s user profile on Twitter did not reflect any information about his current position at Tether or Bitfinex. In its history on the platform, the account had only revealed 135 tweets and registered just over 500 followers, both figures not very unusual for executive leaders of one of the largest firms in the crypto world.
This lack of presence of the CEO has generated some speculation about the identity of van der Velde, some questioning his existence. Others suggest that it is a pseudonym, as indicated by CryptoBriefing.
By: Jenson Nuñez
