The Crypto Conversation UTEXO – Native USDT Comes Home to Bitcoin
Viktor Ihnatiuk is the co-founder and CEO of UTEXO, a Tether-backed global settlement network for native USDT and Bitcoin payments, powered by the Lightning Network and the RGB protocol. Viktor joins Andy Pickering to walk through a decade-long journey from Ukrainian fintech to the frontline of Bitcoin infrastructure — and to explain why the world's biggest stablecoin is finally coming back to the chain where it was born.
Why you should listenViktor traces his path from launching Ukraine's first peer-to-peer lending platform and first fintech conference — where he discovered Bitcoin in 2015 — through to building Boosty Labs, a 150-person dev shop that served Coinbase, Bitfinex, Ledger, MetaMask, and WalletConnect. That operation evolved into a venture studio, and a chance meeting with Tether at Bitcoin Prague in 2023 set the stage for what became UTEXO. Viktor explains how he helped push RGB to mainnet, and how a joint venture with Tether was rebranded into UTEXO, which has just closed a $7.5 million seed round co-led by Tether, Big Brain Holdings, and Plan B Ventures.
The conversation digs into what UTEXO actually delivers: instant USDT and Bitcoin settlement at zero transaction cost, with client-side validation privacy baked in through RGB. Viktor breaks down why this isn't USDT arriving on Bitcoin for the first time — it originally launched on OmniLayer back in 2014 — but rather coming home, rebuilt on infrastructure that finally works. He makes the case that Lightning's scalability leaves every other chain behind, and walks through the key use cases UTEXO is targeting: native BTC-to-USDT swaps, new revenue models for wallets through transaction fee monetization, and cross-exchange high-frequency arbitrage.
Viktor also lays out UTEXO's broader thesis on stablecoin adoption and payments. He argues that the biggest growth opportunity for stablecoins isn't in DeFi yield — it's in emerging markets where USDT already functions as everyday money for savings, remittances, and increasingly, point-of-sale payments. UTEXO is positioning itself as the infrastructure layer for that shift, working alongside partners like WalletConnect and aligning closely with Tether's distribution strategy. The episode closes with Viktor's take on what blockchain is actually good for — payments, trading, and gambling — and why ten years in the trenches taught him to ignore everything else.
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