Tether Operations Limited, the American tech company powering the most widely used stablecoin Tether (USDT), has joined forces with Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange to support the development of a privacy-focused operating system (OS) dubbed Qubes OS for personal computers. According to the announcement, the two blockchain powerhouses will offer a public grant of up to $100k in USDT to enable the open-source development of Qubes OS.

 

The Qubes OS has been in operation for a while and attracted the support of notable figures in the society including whistleblower and privacy advocate Edward Snowden. However, it is the financial support from Tether and Bitfinex that could propel the adoption of Qubes OS to mainstream adoption. According to Paolo Ardoino, CTO of Tether and Bitfinex, there is a growing need for privacy and security in the digital age.

 

“Therefore, we are pleased to support the development of Qubes OS, which is a cutting-edge operating system renowned for its iron-clad security. This grant represents our dedication to fostering open-source initiatives that drive innovation and empower individuals to take control of their digital lives,” Ardoino noted. The move comes amid the push by the United States federal government to roll out a digital dollar that is said to have a huge lapse in privacy. Moreover, some of next year’s US presidential candidates are against the adoption of a CBDC in favor of stablecoins.

 

Meanwhile, the Qubes OS team has welcomed the financial grant and noted that it will significantly help in its linear growth. “We greatly welcome the grant that has been gifted by Tether and Bitfinex. Their support of our open-source software development is critical to the continued growth of our operating system, and ensuring it remains the best-in-class secure platform for all users,” said the Qubes OS team.

 

The Tether and Bitfinex team has commended the Qubes OS development team for providing a much-needed security-oriented operating system. According to Tether, the Qubes OS has gained huge popularity among Bitcoiners and freedom enthusiasts lately. Moreover, the Qubes OS can isolate the different tasks and applications within a separate virtual machine called Qubes by leveraging Xen-based virtualization. As a result, Qubes OS users are guaranteed high security while performing sensitive tasks such as financial transactions.

 

According to Micah Lee, Director of Information Security at The Intercept, and advisor to DDoSecrets, the use of Qubes OS gives users the ultimate control they need to perform sensitive operations. Similarly, Let’s Encrypt, a non-profit leading certificate authority, reiterated that Qubes OS is a huge reinvention of software development toward the security of data.