The most closely watched hiring contest in crypto has a winner. Former senior White House official Bo Hines, whose departure this month led to a flurry of private sector job offers, is joining the stablecoin firm Tether to help lead the company’s expansion into the U.S., a spokesperson confirmed.
Tether, whose headquarters is in El Salvador, is the world’s biggest stablecoin issuer, and its flagship USDT currently boasts a market cap of roughly $167 billion.
Hines joined the Trump administration in January with the task of enacting President Trump’s ambitious crypto agenda, serving as the executive director of the President’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets. After less than seven months in the position, Hines announced his departure on Aug. 9 to pursue a career in the private sector.
He juggled dozens of job offers in the crypto sector and finalized the list to around five as of last Thursday, but Hines eventually chose Tether, just weeks after he helped Congress pass a bill that establishes regulation for stablecoins. Though Tether has a reputation for opaque operations and compliance issues, the company has become close to the Trump administration and has been laying the groundwork to operate in the U.S. for months.
Hines’ decision to lead its U.S. operations will bolster its prominence, and deepen its connections with the Trump administration at a time of escalating competition in the red-hot stablecoin sector. Its chief rival, the U.S.-based Circle, went public in June.
“I’m thrilled to join Tether at such a pivotal moment,” said Hines in a statement.
Stablecoin frenzy
A former Yale wide receiver and two-time Congressional candidate in North Carolina, Hines was a relative unknown before Trump tapped him for a high-profile White House position in January. Alongside AI and crypto czar David Sacks, Hines spent the next six months as a liaison between the Trump administration and industry groups, governmental agencies, and lawmakers as they sought to implement wide-reaching reforms around crypto regulation. The efforts resulted in Congress passing the stablecoin-focused Genius Act earlier this summer, as well as a 166-page report from the White House detailing the new administration’s approach to the crypto industry.
Hines previously told Fortune that he felt the administration had accomplished the president’s goal of making “the U.S. the crypto capital of the world” and wanted to pursue an executive-level private sector role in the industry. He had done limited work in crypto through his investment firm Nxum Capital, which he founded with his father and another partner.
His decision to join Tether will raise eyebrows, given the stablecoin company’s run-ins with U.S. regulators, including a settlement with the New York Office of the Attorney General in 2021 and a reported investigation by the Department of Justice. Tether has denied any wrongdoing, touting its work with U.S. law enforcement to combat illicit activity.
As an offshore operation, Tether faces an uncertain future in the U.S. under the new regulatory system, though it has gained significant political capital under the Trump administration. Tether works with the financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald as the primary custodian for the Treasuries backing its stablecoin, and former Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick is Trump’s commerce secretary. The stablecoin giant invested $775 million into Rumble, a video streaming service that has ties to the president’s publicly traded company Trump Media & Technology Group. And it’s hired Jeff Miller, a lobbyist with close ties to the Republican Party.
By choosing Hines to helm its U.S. operations, Tether will deepen its foothold in the country—and with the Trump administration.
