Vlad Kostiuk, Crypto Industry Analyst
June 16, Germany

For more than ten years, Tether has been known as the issuer of USDT — the world’s largest stablecoin ($112 billion market cap as of June 2025). Now, the company is making a surprising leap in a different direction within the crypto economy: Bitcoin mining. But this is not just about investing in hardware. On the agenda is the launch of a new open-source modular operating system for mining — one that could change the rules of the game.

The operating system, called MOS (Modular  Operating System), is being developed as an open-source platform designed to manage mining setups — from home mini-farms to industrial data centers. According to Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino, MOS will be released publicly in Q4 2025, will be fully P2P, require no central server, and can be installed even on a Raspberry Pi 5 or other single-board controllers. It will be compatible with ASIC equipment from Bitmain, MicroBT, and other industry leaders.
▶ Official website: https://tether.to

How Tether MOS Works

Tether MOS is designed as a modular system with minimal reliance on external components. Each node can:

• Autonomously manage a mining farm
• Connect to a decentralized pool
• Optimize parameters using built-in AI tools
• Interact with energy sources (solar, wind, microgrids)
• Maintain secure logs and analytics (via Tether QVAC)

In addition, the platform supports direct integration with energy sources — including unstable or surplus ones (e.g., hydro or solar generators in rural areas). This makes MOS a key component in the concept of “energy utilization through mining.”

A Step That Changes Everything

For the first time, a free operating system is entering the market that can be deployed without the involvement of large vendors. Until now, professional mining software has either been proprietary (Bitmain Firmware, LuxOS, HiveOS) or required licenses and subscriptions. Tether promises something different: openness, transparency, accessibility, and security.

As of mid-2025, Tether has invested more than $2 billion in mining infrastructure. According to Bloomberg, another $500 million is being directed toward building farms in Paraguay, Uruguay, and El Salvador. Tether Mining’s total capacity could reach 450 megawatts by 2026 — comparable to Riot Platforms and Marathon Digital.

Who Is at Risk?

Traditional public miners — Riot, Bitfarms, Marathon — have increased their capacity to 10–15 EH/s over the past three years, but they remain dependent on proprietary software and energy supply contracts. The launch of MOS by Tether enables mass participation by small and medium players — from rural cooperatives to municipal utilities in developing countries. This undermines the current hashrate monopoly and makes the market more competitive.

Opportunities and Risks

Pros:

• Decentralization of hashrate
• Lower barriers to industry entry
• Efficient use of surplus energy
• AI optimization + transparency through open code
• Integration with Layer-2/Lightning services

Cons:

• Open-source code is vulnerable to targeted attacks
• Cybersecurity issues must be handled at the local level
• Not all ASIC manufacturers are committed to full compatibility
• Licensing disputes are possible, especially if fork versions appear

The Geopolitics of Hashrate

From a geostrategic perspective, this could mean a shift in the mining center away from the U.S. and Kazakhstan toward Latin America and Southeast Asia. Already, El Salvador’s Volcano Energy has joined the MOS testing program as part of a pilot project. In Paraguay, GreenBlocks plans to build a “mining school” based on MOS to train independent operators.

I believe Tether is not just releasing another tech product — it is paving the way for the democratization of mining. MOS could become the “Linux of Bitcoin”: a free, scalable, optimized platform available to everyone. It challenges legacy systems and marks a step forward for blockchain ethics — where power is distributed, not centralized.

We now await Q4 to see how the community receives MOS. But one thing is already clear: mining is once again becoming a political, economic, and technological frontier.