Stablecoin issuer Tether maintains a liquidity cushion of nearly $3.3 billion to provide stability to the Tether ecosystem and garner trust among shareholders.
Tether’s reserves report as of Aug. 24 reveals a combined surplus in shareholder capital cushion of $3.29 billion — spread over 15 blockchain ecosystems. Apart from Algorand and Polygon, Tether has reserved authority to issue USDT (USDT) tokens in the millions.
Out of the lot, the Solana ecosystem leads in terms of the value pre-authorized for issuance, currently standing at $1.57 billion, with Ethereum and Tron taking up the next two slots with pre-authorization of $617 million and $353 million, respectively.
Tether has not yet responded to Cointelegraph’s request for comment about the importance of issuance pre-authorization when it comes to ensuring transparency and trust among the masses.
The total assets under Tether stand at $86.1 billion, with total liabilities amounting to $82.8 billion — thus confirming a reserve backing of over 100%.
The other non-United States dollar stablecoins that fall under Tether’s umbrella — Tether Gold (XAUT), Tether EURt (EURT), Mexican Peso Tether (MXNT) and Tether Chinese Yuan (CNHT) — do not enjoy the same liquidity cushion as USDT. As per the report, none of the other Tether-issued stablecoins have balances to cushion and maintain a 1:1 peg in times of crisis.
In totality, Tether’s transparency report contradicts the ongoing concerns related to its liquidity and backing of assets. In October 2021, Tether was fined $41 million by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission for sharing “untrue” statements about its reserve holdings. However, authorities have not flagged any recent Tether transparency reports issued ever since over the past two years.
Related: Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino says Bitcoin mining needs better analytical tools
Tether recently discontinued its Bitcoin (BTC) version of USDT, known as Bitcoin Omni Layer.
Today #Tether announces the ending of the support of 3 blockchains $USDt: OmniLayer, BCH-SLP and Kusama.
Customers will be able to continue to redeem and swap $USDt tokens (to another of the many supported blockchains), but Tether won’t issue any new additional $USDt on those 3… https://t.co/aghLgqtSuO— Paolo Ardoino (@paoloardoino) August 17, 2023
While no new Tether tokens will be issued on Bitcoin Omni Layer, Kusama or Bitcoin Cash going forward, redemptions will remain available for at least a year from the time of announcement.
The Omni Layer team “faced challenges due to the lack of popular tokens and the availability of USDT on other blockchains,” which led exchanges to use other transport layers instead of Omni. Tether claimed that it would consider reissuing the Omni Layer version if usage of Omni picks up.
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