As bitcoin soars people ask who is Giancarlo Devasini, Italy's richest man?
As bitcoin soars people ask who is Giancarlo Devasini, Italy's richest man?
One of the earliest traces of Devasini's entry into the Bitcoin world dates back to 2012, when he appeared on a Bitcoin forum offering to sell CDs and DVDs for bitcoin. At the time, the cryptocurrency was worth a tiny fraction of its current value.
Then came Bitfinex, the cryptocurrency exchange, and above all Tether.
Tether began life as Realcoin in 2014 before being renamed later that year. Devasini, already closely involved with Bitfinex, went on to become a central figure at the stablecoin company.
A few years later, Paolo Ardoino, a computer scientist from the Italian region of Liguria, joined Bitfinex. He is now Tether's chief executive and has become the public face of the company. Ardoino has said he first met Devasini while working on Bitfinex's software.
The phantom billionaire
Despite a fortune estimated at almost $90 billion, Devasini has largely remained in the shadows, giving few interviews, making few public appearances, and attracting relatively little media exposure.
It is far more often Ardoino who speaks publicly about Tether and its activities. Devasini, by contrast, appears to prefer staying behind the scenes, becoming one of the richest people on the planet without building the kind of public profile associated with many other billionaires.
... and then came Juventus
Devasini's story came to the fore when Tether entered the world of Italian football.
In February 2025, the company announced the purchase of a stake in Juventus, initially equivalent to more than 5% of voting rights. By April, Tether had increased its stake to more than 10% of the club's share capital, making it the club's second-largest shareholder after Exor.
By later that year, Tether's stake had risen to around 11.5% of the club's share capital, with the company also gaining representation on Juventus' board of directors.
The move offered a striking juxtaposition: a company whose chairman built his fortune in the cryptocurrency industry had become a major shareholder in one of the most famous names in Italian football, bringing the world of digital finance into one of the country's most traditional sports.
And it did not stop there. Tether has also sought to expand its presence in sport and entertainment while diversifying its investments beyond stablecoins.
The business behind Devasini's $89bn fortune
As Bitcoin resumed its rally, reaching an intraday high of around $79,500, Tether continued to operate on a different level. Its business is not simply a bet on Bitcoin rising in value, but is built around financial infrastructure underpinning a huge share of the crypto market.
This is what sets Devasini's fortune apart. He is not the archetypal billionaire who bought Bitcoin when it cost next to nothing and then waited for its value to soar. Instead, he helped build one of the key instruments through which money enters, exits, and circulates in the cryptocurrency economy.
And while Bitcoin makes headlines each time it breaks another threshold, the "phantom billionaire" from Casale Monferrato remains a far more discreet figure, operating behind a company that handles hundreds of billions of dollars and has, according to Forbes, become valuable enough to turn a little-known Italian businessman into the country's richest person.
This article has been published in Euronews via Yahoo News.
As bitcoin soars people ask who is Giancarlo Devasini, Italy's richest man?
Bitcoin is nearing $80,000 again, putting the crypto economy and Giancarlo Devasini in the spotlight.View on euronews
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