Tether and Circle added about $200B in Treasuries and repos over five years, the San Francisco Fed says. That exceeds 40% of China’s Treasury decline, but issuers favor short maturities while China cut longer-dated debt.

Tether Faces New Iran USDT Scrutiny Sen. Richard Blumenthal has released a Senate report examining Tether’s role in Iran’s shadow banking network. The investigation reviewed blockchain activity across 846 wallets sanctioned or targeted over Iranian connections. Investigators found 84% of those wallets transacted exclusively or almost exclusively in USDT. Blumenthal urged Treasury and Justice officials to investigate potential sanctions and banking law violations. Tether disputes the characterization, saying it has helped freeze nearly $550 million linked to Iran.

Tether banking partner EQIBank is fighting to recover about $90 million seized from accounts held by a U.S. payment provider it used to access the American banking system. Read more:

Tether declined to apply for a MiCA license in the EU over reserve rules. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the rules require 60% of significant stablecoin issuers’ reserves in commercial bank deposits, making stablecoins less protected. EU deposit insurance covers only €100,000. “When MiCA becomes safer for consumers and stablecoin issuers, we may reconsider the decision,” Ardoino said. IMO: I agree - forcing stable coin issuers to back with bank liquidity is too risky going into 2030. Bank ledgers are too high a risk. If a EU Bank collapses the Stable Coin are unbacked. Soverign debt is acceptable but bank debt is not.

Tether has emerged as a major bullion lender, providing about $1.5 billion in financing to a top US gold dealer after amassing one of the world’s largest private hoards of the precious metal.

Tether and Blackrock are still dominating the RWA game. @Tether and @BlackRock currently offer the industry's two largest tokenised assets in the form of XAUT and BUIDL, respectively. While impressive, it seems to suggest that decentralised platforms are still nowhere near competing with major centralised players. That said, @Ondo's USDY does sit high in the list.

Tether (@tether) actively cooperates with the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to freeze wallets involved in illicit activities and sanctions evasion.👉USDT is not going to be sanctioned🤦. The US relies on this cooperation.

Tether is sued over allegations it froze $42.4 million in USDT before authorities obtained a warrant, spot XRP ETFs extend their inflow streak, and the SEC explores round-the-clock trading for Wall Street. @jennsanasie has what you need to know. Thank you to @Grayscale for being a sponsor of the CoinDesk Media Network.