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Comment by mumbisChungo | Hacker News Reader

No, USDT and USDC are both backed on a 1:1 basis by banking custodians which are regularly audited.

USDT is backed by over $8billion in commercial paper, a lot of which seems to be in Chinese real estate companies that are very unlikely to be worth their claimed value.

And note that this was true in May - global markets are WAY down since then.

Moreover, it was only a spot verification - they could have moved money into treasuries for a day and then moved it back again. The auditors explicitly avoided commenting on this.

Yes, it looks like 12% of their assets are in commercial paper.

I'm not claiming to be an omniscient source of truth, but USDT is supposed to be backed 1:1, is audited regularly, and has survived extreme volatility events and bank runs for the better part of a decade.

Maybe it will collapse some day. I personally have more trust in USDC and Circle, so I use that if I need a stablecoin.

USDT wasn't even audited once, forget about regularly.

https://blockworks.co/tether-pushes-back-timeline-on-audit-r...

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what this document is

https://assets.ctfassets.net/vyse88cgwfbl/2xJyKdUKicdRUWpC9b...

That's not an audit, it's an attestation. The article says:

>The company does release quarterly attestations, separate from a thorough audit, as required by a 2021 legal settlement with the New York Attorney General’s Office. Following the hiring of its new accounting firm, BDO Italia, earlier this month, Tether said it intends to release them on a monthly basis, beginning early next year.

Could you point me to an USDT audit? Thanks!

The whole audit is nicely cover in a single "Trust me bro"

you can read the texts of them yourself and make up your own mind

DYOR or "don't trust, verify" are common mantras in the industry for a reason, and similarly are the reason that I hold custody of my own assets rather than relying on centralized entities like FTX.

https://tether.to/en/transparency/#reports

Not an audit

One of the first links on that page is a document titled "INDEPENDENT AUDITORS' REPORT ON THE CONSOLIDATED RESERVES REPORT"

https://assets.ctfassets.net/vyse88cgwfbl/2xJyKdUKicdRUWpC9b...

Who are bdo.it ?

Not one of the first four auditing companies i'd call or trust.

BDO is literally the number five accounting firm globally; so, yeah, not the top four, but ...

BDO is a legit company, though not a "Big-4", I think most would consider them top-10 for audit without any qualms. It's much more reputable than some of the firms that Tether had been trotting out in the past.

A reserves report is not an audit

Roughly 20% of Tether's "cash equivalent" investments are with grade A-1 and A-2 parties. It's effectively stable, until it's not. We'll see it in our lifetimes.

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