TETHER IN 2025: A CAPITAL ANALYSIS

Summary from the TLDR Crypto newsletter

Tether is like an unregulated bank rather than a simple money transmitter. Depending mostly on how harshly you treat BTC, Tether's total capital ratio ranges from ~10.9% (OK vs minimal regulatory standards) down to ~3.9% (bad vs market norms). Group-level profits and equity look big, but most sit outside the actual reserve entity and aren't legally committed to back USDT redemptions, so they can't be counted as true regulatory capital.