[pja]

Yes, BUSD & USDC have regular attestations that their holding of USD in bank accounts backed by the US government & US treasuries are real.

Tether on the other hand has invested mostly in commercial credit, who’s counterparty they decline to identify. Given that they constitute something like the 5th largest commercial credit fund in the world on that basis & the other funds deny seeing them in their markets, it seems that they’re lending to ... lets say unorthodox counter parties.

Some have suggested that they’ve been lending to Chinese builders, but it seems more likely to me that they’ve been lending Tether to cryptocurrency trading houses and marking it up on their books. This would create a self-feeding circular dynamic at one or two removes; if so the whole thing could unwind quite spectacularly.