Tether, the company behind the USDT stablecoin, is ramping up its efforts in the Bitcoin mining industry.

In an interview with Bloomberg on Thursday, Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino said the company plans to invest $500 million in building its own Bitcoin mining facilities and investing in other miners across the world.

Tether plans to build Bitcoin mining sites in Uruguay, Paraguay and El Salvador, in line with its plans to grow its computing power to 1% of the Bitcoin mining network. These facilities would have a capacity between 40 and 70 megawatts.

“Mining for us is something that we have to learn and grow over time. We are not in a rush to become the biggest miner in the world,” said Ardoino, who will assume his role as CEO of Tether in December.

In a post on X, he noted that the company was close to adding “another extremely powerful piece of the puzzle” to the Tether ecosystem.

We're quite close to add another extremely powerful piece of the puzzle for @Tether_to ecosystem.

Total of 5 mind-blowing projects (and counting) for 2024.
Couple of these could obliterate some popular Web2 centralized services for good.

Pure Real World Ecosystem aka "Things…

— Paolo Ardoino 🍐 (@paoloardoino) November 12, 2023

Earlier this year, the firm also declared it would allocate up to 15% of its profits to growing its stash of Bitcoin, which it plans to hold in a self-custodial wallet. Tether also reported a Q1 net profit of $1.48 billion this year, with Bitcoin making up 2% of its existing reserves.

Tether still retains its status as the issuer of the largest stablecoin in digital asset markets, with USDT boasting a market capitalization of $87.5 billion.