[tkfu]

That's a bit of a mischaracterization. The 75% that they're describing as "Cash & Cash Equivalents" might be similar to money market funds in composition, but we can't know whether it is or not because they don't give any details about the commercial paper. They don't even make the claim that it's asset-backed. Because they aren't saying anything about that, and they're not audited, they could very well be making riskier bets.

But more importantly, there's the 25% of their funds that bears absolutely no resemblance to anything a money market fund would do. The quote the FT article publishes from Martin Walker looks pretty reasonable to me:

> It is pretty clear looking at the makeup of the reserves — a tiny proportion of the reserves are cash on account at banks — that Tether is operating like a bank but with none of the normal disclosure.

> They are creating a dollar substitute and basically running a banking and payments business but without the oversight that anyone else doing a similar kind of business would have.

[mathrando]

> They are creating a dollar substitute and basically running a banking and payments business but without the oversight that anyone else doing a similar kind of business would have.

You could take that word-for-word from the debate that raged after Treasury bailed out the prime funds in 2008.

[tkfu]

Money market funds arguably act like a banking business, but are subject to regulation of their marketing material that obliges them to explain that they're not, and they certainly don't operate like a payments business.

Money market deposit accounts are a different story, and are highly regulated (and secured).

That being said, even if your comparison was accurate "hey, look at this similar business that caused harm and chaos during the last financial crisis" isn't exactly a glowing endorsement, is it?