> What's the difference between "attested" and "audited" in this context.
Attestation: "Person X has $50 million dollars in an account."
Audit: "Person X has $50 million dollars in an account, and we know how it got there, who has claims on it, and whether it's fairly likely to still exist tomorrow."
As a concrete example:
https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2021.02.17_-_settlemen...
> On the morning of September 15, 2017, Tether opened an account at Noble Bank.
Later that day, Bitfinex transferred $382,446,847.71 from Bitfinex’s account at Noble Bank into Tether’s account at Noble Bank. Friedman conducted its verification of Tether’s assets as of 8:00 p.m. EST.
https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-...
> On November 1, 2018, Tether publicized another self-proclaimed ‘verification’ of its cash reserve; this time at Deltec Bank & Trust Ltd. of the Bahamas. The announcement linked to a letter dated November 1, 2018, which stated that tethers were fully backed by cash, at one dollar for every one tether. However, the very next day, on November 2, 2018, Tether began to transfer funds out of its account, ultimately moving hundreds of millions of dollars from Tether’s bank accounts to Bitfinex’s accounts. And so, as of November 2, 2018 — one day after their latest ‘verification’ — tethers were again no longer backed one-to-one by U.S. dollars in a Tether bank account.
An audit would've flagged this. An attestation does not.
It's like a kid who answers "are you eating cookies before dinner" with "no" because they stopped when you asked the question and are not currently eating one.