The speaker highlights Tether's fractional reserve banking model, where it holds cash-like entities and higher-yielding assets like Bitcoin and gold, which have different liquidity profiles than its deposits. This structure means Tether is not fully reserved in a way that could instantly liquidate everything, posing a risk if there's a mass exodus, similar to how money market mutual funds operate with a riskier balance sheet.
“Tether is holding basically doing fractional reserve banking, right? They have a bunch of cash on their balance sheet and cashlike entities and then they have the top part of their balance sheet generating a lot more yield with Bitcoin and gold and other things that effectively induce higher returns.”