> US treasury bonds?

It’s hard to accumulate $100bn Treasuries without the dealers noticing.

From [1]

- U.S. Treasury Bills: $28,856,434,491

- Commercial Paper and Certificates of Deposit: $8,402,426,505

- Money Market Funds: $6,810,253,431

- Cash & Bank Deposits: $5,418,232,067

- Reverse Repurchase Agreements: $2,992,015,954

- Non-U.S. Treasury Bills: $397,150,678

- Corporate Bonds, Funds & Precious Metals: $3,486,896,735

- Other Investments: $5,551,836,303

- Secured Loans: $4,494,373,260

- Total: $66,409,619,424

[1] https://assets.ctfassets.net/vyse88cgwfbl/2xJyKdUKicdRUWpC9b...

Thanks for the reference. Although I'm not able to judge the validity of the report, looks like around half of Tether's assets (not necessarily half of their market cap) are held in dollar-denominated securities (T-bills and cash).

> US treasury bonds?

Would you accept the lowest rated Chinese junk bonds instead?

Asking for a friend…

No.

What are they then?

I believe Tether's claim is essentially "We can't tell you what dollar-denominated assets we're backed by, or get any competent auditors to sign off on our accounts, but the reserves are there. Trust us. Would a cryptocurrency company lie to you?"

Could be a piece of tissue paper with an IOU for a trillion dollars from Deadbeat Dan. Could be a deed to lovely waterfront property on the moon. Could be a controlling interest in Bitfinex. We don't know.

It's backed by Tethers.

They won't say.