If you look at their yearly profits and liquid cash, clearly Tether is backed by something. This is not the same as saying that they have full transparency but you cannot have those profits in dollars out of thin air.
Usually the correct answer is the simplest - fraud.
Any evidence that they actually own?
“ In its own attestation report for Q2 2025, Tether stated it holds about US$127 billion in U.S. Treasuries” this is the only source. And tbh anyone can “attest” it owns billions of whatever. Again, no audit because there is nothing there. They only attest through BDO Italia. And attestations are easily gamed. Usually worthless, but useful for usdt hodlers.
I wonder why they use bdo? See below their history.
About bdo:
In the UK, a former senior manager at BDO (in the UK member firm) was banned for 20 years for creating false audit documents and mis-using signatures.
In July 2025 the UK regulator Financial Reporting Council (FRC) flagged the BDO network as having audit quality “significantly short of expectations”. Only about half the audits reviewed were deemed satisfactory