1. Tether has attested, under penalty of perjury in response to orders by a NY court that they aren't backing USDT with dollars, they are backing it with various financial instruments.
2. Tether has claimed, prior to that, that USDT is backed by dollars.
3. Since #1, Tether has not been transparent about their backed assets. Oh, sure, they say that they own X billion dollars of <some particular asset type>, but we don't know if those are AAA assets, or utter garbage[1], or whether they are counterbalanced by liabilities.
4. So far, the track record for unaudited crypto funds is not great.
On the scale of 'Untrusted', 'Trusted', and 'Completely Trusted'[2], I would definitely put them int he 'Untrusted' category.
[1] The fact that they were even considering buying FTX leads me to believe that they have no aversion to paying good money for garbage.
[2] Promotion to the third category can only happen posthumously.
2. Tether has claimed, prior to that, that USDT is backed by dollars.
3. Since #1, Tether has not been transparent about their backed assets. Oh, sure, they say that they own X billion dollars of <some particular asset type>, but we don't know if those are AAA assets, or utter garbage[1], or whether they are counterbalanced by liabilities.
4. So far, the track record for unaudited crypto funds is not great.
On the scale of 'Untrusted', 'Trusted', and 'Completely Trusted'[2], I would definitely put them int he 'Untrusted' category.
[1] The fact that they were even considering buying FTX leads me to believe that they have no aversion to paying good money for garbage.
[2] Promotion to the third category can only happen posthumously.