Yeah, this is exactly the issue with Tether — they love throwing around the word audit when in reality it’s just quarterly attestations. Attestation = they show a snapshot of reserves based on numbers they themselves provide, and an accounting firm basically rubber-stamps it. That’s very different from a full GAAS audit where everything is independently verified from top to bottom.

The crazy part is that people in crypto hear “independent report” and automatically assume it means “audited”. Tether has been promising a real audit since like 2017 and it’s still “coming soon”. Meanwhile, they remain the biggest stablecoin in circulation.

At this point, I think most of us accept USDT is a black box. It works because the market believes it works. But if they ever had to open the books like a public company, we’d either see the truth (good or bad) or the whole thing would collapse. Until then, “attestation theater” is all we’re gonna get.