Tether went from a shady company where auditors left and not audit ever came out (in these so called monthly transparency that was suppose to happen) to a mega house of wealth that other companies are now trying to catch up to and mimic.
A Little History
Tether was the first stable coin to actully gain a lot of traction. While it doesn't hold the title of the first stable coin which is owned by BitUSD on the BitShare blockchain it wasn't far behind.
Stable coins such as Tether didn't gain a lot of traction until the last bull run of 2020-2021 in which the market cap of it exploded. It wasn't without scrutiny however as people started to demand an audit of the stable coin to make sure their money was actully backed up if a mass amount of people exited it. (Think of it as a bank run)
That audit seems like the doom of Tether back in the day as the major company that was suppose to do it ended up leaving without saying why. Normally audit companies do this when they don't feel good about something they see on the books which really started the speculation and watchful eyes.
Still to this day Tether has not done an audit but we are getting at least some general information out of it all. This no audit really does raise some alarms and honestly some valid concerns.
In a recent podcast with the CTO of Tether he explained the reason there hasn't been an audit. The first he shot out is that their first competitor (USDC) doesn't have an audit either.
The second fire back on that was the top 4 auditing firms he says are afraid to take on a stable coin. Fearing that their reputation as an audit company would be on the line for taking on the first stable coin as a customer.
He also highlighted a very true point that politicians have in fact told big firms like this to not mess with and get their hands in crypto. This is actully a very valid point as we have seen this first hand with banks and other areas of the financial markets for years now including politicians coming right out and admitting it.
You can watch this section of the podcast here
For the most part the general feeling is there's nothing really of substance there besides blaming others that they wont take on the "risk" of doing an audit on them and that they are still working on it.
Asset Growth
While Tether could very well have been up to shady things in the past it's pretty well known and clear now that their asset values have growth to crazy levels. Most likely to the point of where the company has enough money on hand to cover all current Tether and then generating enough revenue vast amounts of it through things like Tbills.
It now seems like the company is going to branch out into other areas. As of September 30th the company 3.2 billion in excess cash. Much of that money is coming from Tbills (Treasury bills) which are currently paying out over 5%. Take 3 billion times 5% and you get... $250,000,000 generated is pure passive style income for one year of lockup time. But they can of course do 3 month or 6 month. These new rates are allowing Tether to simply rake in the money and it's why we have seen other companies like Paypal and COINBASE launch their own to start sucking up those sweet rates at scale.
The Next Move
Tether has now expressed they are going to move towards bitcoin mining and position themselves as one of the largest bitcoin miners. They for sure have the capital to do so.
Their initial goal is to produce 120 megawatts of mining capacity and by the end of 2025 to increase that to 450 megawatts of capacity.
This is a major move by the company to further increase their crypto gains and start building sizeable amounts of other assets outside of treasury bonds further diversifying their portfolio.
