Paolo Ardoino has been interested in computers since he was a child. He began coding at the age of eight and later participated in the computer science programme at the University of Genoa, where he graduated in 2008. Ardoino became intimately concerned with cryptography and discovered distributed systems while undertaking research for a military project. He was motivated by the idea that people could manage their own wealth without banks or other intermediaries, and that the millions of unbanked and underbanked people throughout the world could have access to financial services, after reading the Bitcoin white paper in 2012.
Ardoino began his career as a senior software developer at Bitfinex in 2014, and after two years, he was elevated to chief technology officer. He is also the commander.
Tether's market valuation, which is tethered to the US dollar, remained one of the hottest issues in 2020, rising fivefold from $4 billion to more than $20 billion in a single year. Tether's average daily transfer value topped that of Bitcoin and PayPal over the summer. Tether Gold, a gold-backed stablecoin, was also launched under Ardoino's technical direction. While the company has been chastised for its reserve policy and refusal to burn its Ethereum-based tokens, Ardoino has openly defended its decisions.
Meanwhile, Bitfinex had a banner year in 2020, launching a staking service, institution-grade custody services, an open-source peer-to-peer streaming protocol, and a market surveillance tool, all under the technological supervision of Ardoino. In addition, the exchange earned headlines for conducting one of the largest Bitcoin transactions ever.