Giancarlo Devasini

Giancarlo Devasini
Born	30 4 1964 (age 62 years old (as of 2026) ) Italy
Occupation	businessman
Known for	Chairman of Tether; co-owner of Bitfinex
Education	Milan University (Doctor of Medicine, 1990)

Italian businessman; chairman and reported largest shareholder of the stablecoin issuer Tether

Giancarlo Devasini (born 30 April 1964) is an Italian businessman, a former physician and computer-parts trader who became an executive and leading shareholder of the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex and of Tether, the largest issuer of crypto stablecoins.^[1]^[2] On 20 October 2026 the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires list ranked Giancarlo Devasini 22nd in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$89.3 billion; Forbes lists the source of wealth as Cryptocurrency.^[1]^[3] In the annual World's Billionaires list published in 2026, Forbes had ranked Giancarlo Devasini 22nd, at US$89.3 billion.^[4]

Early life and education

Forbes gives Devasini's date of birth as 30 April 1964 and his citizenship as Italian.^[1] According to a 2018 Bitfinex biography, he qualified as a Doctor of Medicine at Milan University in 1990. He then left medicine to work in technology, and spent time in East Asia looking for opportunities in the computer hardware trade.^[2]

Business career

The Bitfinex biography says Devasini returned to Milan in 1992 and founded Point-G Srl to import computer parts from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan for distribution in Europe. In 1997 he founded Solo SpA, which sorted, graded and resold out-of-specification DRAM memory lots from manufacturers. According to the company, the Solo group grew to more than 100 employees and €113 million in annual revenue, and Devasini sold it and retired shortly before the 2008 financial crisis.^[2]

The same biography says he came across bitcoin in early 2012. Later that year he met Raphael Nicolle, who had put Bitfinex together from the remains of Bitcoinica, and he became a partner in the exchange, working on its banking relationships, recruitment and re-domiciling. In 2018 Bitfinex described him as its chief financial officer.^[2] Forbes's 2025 list text described him as Tether's chief financial officer, and its 2026 text describes him as Tether's chairman and probably its largest shareholder.^[1]

In January 2025 Tether announced that it had obtained a Digital Asset Service Provider licence and stablecoin-issuer status in El Salvador, and that it and its subsidiaries were about to complete their relocation there.^[5] Under Devasini's chairmanship the group has invested outside crypto. Its investment arm, Tether Investments, announced on 24 April 2025 that it owned more than 10.12% of the share capital of the Italian football club Juventus, representing 6.18% of the voting rights.^[6] In March 2025 it agreed to launch a cash tender offer at US$12.41 a share for Adecoagro, a Luxembourg-registered agricultural production company operating in South America,, which would take its holding to about 70%.^[7]

Wealth

Forbes estimates that Devasini owns about 45% of Tether. It values the company by applying the average price-to-earnings multiples of a group of listed mid-sized banks and asset managers.^[1] Forbes's 2026 text states that more than 180 billion Tether tokens had been minted and that the company reported more than US$10 billion in profit for 2025, helped by interest on the US Treasury securities that make up most of its reserves.^[1] His 2025 entry put his stake at an estimated 47%.^[1]

Wealth history

Forbes has included this entry in its annual World's Billionaires list in 3 of the editions from 2001 to 2026 checked for this profile, starting with 2024. The table gives the rank and estimated net worth in each annual list.^[4]^[1]

Forbes estimates by list year
Year	World's Billionaires rank	Net worth (US$ bn)
2024	266	9.2
2025	90	22.4
2026	22	89.3

Philanthropy

No personal charitable foundation or major documented personal gift by Devasini was found in the sources checked for this profile.

Political activity

No political donations or party roles were found in the sources checked. Devasini is not a US citizen, and no FEC search was made for him. Company-level dealings with governments are described under International and political links.

Controversies and legal issues

In December 1996 Computerworld reported that Devasini, then 32 and owner of the Milan software distributor Point G Srl, had agreed to pay Microsoft US$65,000 in damages, hand over financial records and cooperate against other dealers. The settlement followed an Italian investigation into the sale of unlicensed software, in which more than 40 people were accused of distributing over 25,000 illegal floppy disks. He told reporters that selling unlicensed software was a crime even for someone who did not know it was unlicensed.^[8]

On 23 February 2021 the New York State Attorney General announced an agreement with iFinex, the operator of Bitfinex, and Tether. The office said the companies had made false statements about the backing of the tether stablecoin and had moved hundreds of millions of dollars between them to hide about US$850 million in Bitfinex losses. The agreement required them to stop trading with New Yorkers and to pay US$18.5 million in penalties.^[9] The office's investigation found that from no later than mid-2017 Tether had no access to banking, and that for some periods it did not hold one dollar in reserve for every token in circulation.^[9]

On 15 October 2021 the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) ordered Tether to pay a US$41 million civil penalty over untrue or misleading statements about the US dollar backing of the USDT stablecoin. It ordered Bitfinex to pay US$1.5 million for illegal off-exchange retail commodity transactions and for operating as an unregistered futures commission merchant.^[10] These actions were taken against the companies; the releases checked did not name Devasini as a respondent.

International and political links

This section uses the same ten headings for every profile in this series. Only specific, sourced actions are included; company-level and foundation-level actions are labelled as such. Where nothing was found, the entry reads "No documented involvement found in sources checked."

Israel (investments, operations, donations, contracts, statements)

In October 2023 Tether, as a company, said it had frozen 32 cryptocurrency addresses holding US$873,118.34 that were linked to terrorism and warfare in Israel and Ukraine, and that it had been working with Israel's National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing (NBCTF).^[11]^[12]