Couldnt they simply borrow $2.55 billion for a day, put it in a bank account, show lawyer, then transfer it out? Such as borrow from the company founders who have made a fortune selling tether?
There was a car-maker (I wish I could remember who -- I want to say Audi, but that feels wrong) who was trying to get their car entered into a race. The requirements for the race was that the car had to be a production car, and of course there's wasn't, so they made just enough (I think it was 50) to get classified as production.
Well, they didn't meet the production quota, and when the inspectors came by to check, they showed them the 30 or so cars they had made, but told them the other cars were at a different lot. "Let's go there now, only maybe we'll stop off for lunch on the way," while every employee they had was tasked with moving one of the 30 cars to the second lot so that when the inspectors arrivd, the first 30 + the second 30 was definitely greater than 60.
Edit: If anyone remembers the story better, I'd love a refresher on it. I can't remember where I heard it from, but it was probably either a Netflix documentary or The Grand Tour on Amazon.
https://www.facebook.com/thegrandtour/videos/732926230239254...
There is the paperwork for you from the FIA database. If you like your cars then you could be there for a while.
Exchanges repurposing customer deposits.
Rather than holding dollars for you, they instead sell you tethers.
Now they aren't holding client money's, but instead valueless tokens with a 'promise' to maybe redeem them for dollars later.
As a side note though, the organization I work for takes in client funds and then grants them out to nonprofits. Technically all of our assets are legally unencumbered but our clients absolutely expect to have access to them. The definition of unencumbered depends on the internal lawyers’ views of their commitment to any clients and investors.
When, from whom, for what period, under what conditions yada yada.
A single sentence in a contract from a lender could nullify everything effectively making it all for show.
The reason the report was from a 'high profile firm' might be because they are trying to make a political/news/pop-culture statement to the masses of users, investors and techies, as opposed to a strictly legal one to would be SEC or auditors or whatever.
Is repeated multiple times in the articles and the lawyers statements.
Smells like a case of an idea getting ahead of the legal requirements and trying to catch up after the fact.
Are there any reporting requirements around large loans/investments? I wonder if someone can publicly trace where these $2B came from and when.