The stablecoin giant is betting big on a Brooklyn startup that grew out of sneaker-bot culture—and now processes billions for digital creators worldwide.
Steven Schwartz started selling access to sneaker-buying bots as a teenager. Now, at 24, he's raised $200 million from Tether Investments for Whop, the digital commerce platform he built from those Discord-era hustles into a company valued at $1.6 billion.
The deal, disclosed by Whop on February 25, represents one of the largest direct investments Tether has made into payments infrastructure—and it signals something more ambitious than another crypto bet. Whop plans to embed self-custodial USDT payments directly into its creator payout system, layering stablecoin rails onto a network already moving $3 billion annually to 18.4 million users across 144 countries.
Tether itself confirmed only a "strategic investment," declining to specify the amount or valuation. But for Schwartz and his co-founders—Cameron Zoub and Jack Sharkey—the capital offers a chance to test whether crypto can genuinely solve old payment problems, not just promise to.
Stablecoins as Plumbing, Not Speculation
Whop will integrate Tether's Wallet Development Kit, the stablecoin issuer's open-source toolkit for embedding wallets into third-party apps. Creators on the platform will soon be able to receive payouts in USDT alongside options like Venmo, PayPal, and bank transfers—mundane choices that, for international sellers, often mean days of lag time and fees that climb into double digits.
The company's proprietary payments stack, which went live in September 2025, already handles roughly 40,000 transactions daily. Adding stablecoins isn't about chasing volatility; it's infrastructure. Or at least that's the pitch. For cross-border payments, where traditional processors still extract their pound of flesh, USDT offers speed and cost savings that sound less like hype and more like relief.
Beyond payments, Whop has plans—expansive ones. Geographic expansion across Latin America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. AI-driven tools the company is calling "agentic income" features, though details remain vague. Even DeFi capabilities: lending and borrowing products tied to creator earnings, which could either unlock liquidity or introduce new risk depending on how they're structured.
Perhaps more than Schwartz expected when he was arbitraging sneakers online.
Underground Origins
Whop's origin story reads like a footnote in internet subculture that somehow became a business. Schwartz and Zoub met as teenagers in the sneaker-bot world, trading scripts and access in private Discord servers. Sharkey came aboard as CTO to build the technical plumbing. They launched in 2021, positioning Whop as both marketplace and infrastructure for digital products: online courses, software subscriptions, memberships, closed communities.
The business model is straightforward. Creators sell through Whop's storefronts; the company takes a 3% platform fee plus processing costs, acting as both marketplace operator and merchant of record. In 2025, Whop launched an App Store—modular tools developers can build that creators install and monetize.
But the platform has also attracted scrutiny. Whop's fastest-growing verticals include sports betting picks, crypto trading signals, and "make money online" courses—high-margin, high-controversy categories. TechCrunch raised moderation concerns during coverage of the company's Series A in 2023, and those questions haven't entirely gone away. Whop markets itself as neutral infrastructure, but what gets built on that infrastructure matters.
Capital at Speed
The funding trajectory has been aggressive, even by venture standards. In July 2023, Whop closed a $17 million Series A led by Insight Partners, valuing the company north of $100 million. That round pulled in names like Peter Thiel, Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen, and Twitch co-founder Justin Kan—backers who understand platforms built from niche communities.
By mid-2024, Whop had reportedly raised over $50 million in a Series B led by Bain Capital Ventures at roughly an $800 million valuation, according to secondary market data tracked by Sacra. The company never formally announced that round, a deliberate choice or an operational quirk depending on who you ask.
Whop now claims 25% month-over-month growth in gross transaction value. If accurate—and sustained—that's an eye-watering pace, the kind that either precedes a breakout or a plateau. The company says it processed $1.4 billion in cumulative creator payouts by September 2025; today, it quotes $3 billion annually.
What Tether Is Buying
For Tether, the investment is about distribution. The company has been pushing beyond stablecoin issuance into real-world use cases where USDT can serve as payment infrastructure, not just a speculative vehicle. Its Wallet Development Kit previously integrated Lightning Network support in August 2025; in January 2026, Tether and Rumble launched a non-custodial wallet using the same toolkit.
Whop offers something tangible: a network of creators and digital merchants who need fast, low-cost international payouts. It's a wedge into commerce where traditional payment rails still bottleneck. Whether that wedge becomes a door depends on execution—and whether creators trust self-custodial wallets enough to use them.
Schwartz framed the partnership in lofty terms. On LinkedIn, he wrote that the integration would help "build the world's largest internet market," unlocking stablecoin payments for the next generation of the internet economy. Whether that's vision or venture-backed hyperbole remains an open question.
But Whop now has the capital—and the pressure—to find out.
