CONGRESS IS BANNING A CBDC — TETHER ALREADY FROZE $4.2 BILLION

$4.11 billion. That is everything Tether owns above what it owes, on June 30, in the quarterly report its accountant BDO signed. Three months earlier it was $8.23 billion. The cushion halved in a quarter, and with 146 tons of gold and 98,933 bitcoin sitting inside the reserves, a 17% move in those two erases what is left.

That is the small story. Here is the big one.

At the end of March, Tether held about $141 billion of US government debt, the seventeenth largest holder on earth. Every foreign government together holds about $8.5 trillion. Japan alone holds $1.13 trillion. Now picture the world’s dollars living in tokens instead of bank accounts. The issuer becomes a bigger creditor to Washington than Japan is, and unlike Japan it never sells to make a point, and it freezes what Washington asks it to freeze.

That is the trade on offer. A buyer of American debt with no foreign policy, in exchange for putting every dollar holder on a list with an off switch.

The switch is not a theory. Tether has frozen more than $4.2 billion of USDT since 2023, and blacklisted 370 addresses in one month this spring. It does not take a judge in your country. It takes one company agreeing.

A digital dollar is the thing people are told to fear, and the House has already voted to ban one. The same job is being done privately, at scale, today. Bitcoin in your own custody has no issuer, no list and no switch. That is the whole product.

At the time of this writing, bitcoin was $77,195 at 2:03 PM ET on Crypto.com.