> Top five accounting services firm Grant Thornton LLP issues attestations each month on the US dollar reserves that back the USDC tokens in circulation.

Attestations were never intended to be used in this way, and are, in this situation, meaningless. The only reasonable purpose for these attestations is to confuse people who mistakenly conflate them with audits.

The fact that USDC is resorting to this behaviour rather than performing audits is not meaningless, however: it's a substantial red flag.

An attestation is an assurance that published valuations add up correctly. It provides no verification of the veracity of those valuations. Attestations are intended to be used as a follow-up to an actual audit, not as a replacement for one.

> One of the things to keep in mind to differentiate each of these services is that audits are performed to discover data, risks, or compliance issues that may not have been known before the audit took place, and attestation is to evaluate and review how true the data or information is when compared to a stated purpose, internal control or system.

https://www.ispartnersllc.com/blog/defining-attestation-assu...