$USDT Don’t just focus on that pretty balance sheet—Tether’s whole game is basically “the crypto world’s shadow bank.”

Let’s start with the books: In Q1 2025, they issued $174.5 billion in tokens (liabilities) against an asset pool of $181.2 billion, which on the surface gives a $6.8 billion buffer. But here’s the issue—do all the assets in that pool carry the same risk weight? Can Bitcoin’s volatility really compare to gold? Can the liquidity of equity investments and mining assets match that of Treasuries?

Using traditional banking risk-weighted asset calculations as a rough estimate: their risk asset size swings between $62 billion and $115 billion, with a capital adequacy ratio of 8.7%-18.9%. It just barely passes, but compared to the safety cushion of major traditional banks? There’s still a $4.5 billion hole.

Here’s where it gets even more interesting—the group behind Tether holds a pile of assets in renewable energy, mining farms, AI infrastructure, and gold mines. Sounds impressive, but when a crisis hits, how liquid are these assets, really? Who would the group prioritize saving? That uncertainty is the biggest black box.

Dirt Roads’ “journey narrative” fits well here—this borderland between crypto and traditional finance never had a clear-cut answer. Especially now, with so many unknowns: the SEC just announced “global financial assets on-chain,” Stable’s public chain is TGE’ing tonight, and whether the stablecoin public chain story still has legs—the market hasn’t given its verdict yet.

Do you think Tether’s reserves can withstand a run in extreme market conditions? Or will this new “finance on-chain” narrative give stablecoins a second wind?