That is absolut nonsense. There are tens of thousands of commercial paper that are way riskier than the highest rated mortgages. Even a portfolio of those CPs. To compare you need two portfolios and need to know exactly which ones are in each portfolio. But your blanket statement is factually false.
it doesn't matter whether it is a true fraud or fake fraud or worthy cryptocurrency. whatever it is, you buy low sell high, or sell high buy low.
Commercial paper defaults are less correlated with each other than mortgages, and much shorter duration eliminates interest rate change risk. Even the safest 30-year mortgage in the world can lose half its value if interest rates go up 2-3%. I don't see any difference between what Tether is doing and what any other large company does with the "cash and equivalents" line on their balance sheet. Nobody holds literal cash. It's bank deposits, t-bills, commercial paper, and other interest-paying instruments with <6 months maturity. So this "big reveal" of "fraud" actually shows normal, responsible, totally non-fraudulent money management.
1,000's of very talented traders and analysts don't agree though because if they did agree (Tether = fraud) why hasn't the price been smashed? Note, that the above know far more than 99% of people on this message board (including me) and 99.99% more than the Tether Truthers... Still, there's always tomorrow guys for the Tether implosion. And if it doesn't happen then, then next week. And if it doesn't happen then, next month, year, decade etc? And all the time, the DAE (Digital Assets Ecosystem) gets bigger and stronger...
Omid Malekan has the best take down of the Tether Truthers - "deep down inside they want Tether to be a scam, and for crypto to be a ponzi, and for Blockchain to be a fad. That way, they don't have to know about it. They don't have to open their minds to a new way of storing and transferring value, one that may someday impact their day job" https://omid-malekan.medium.com/why-so-many-people-really-want-tether-to-be-a-fraud-1d1d2f66a71f
I always had my doubt on tether and the people running it. But looking at market cap, tether only counts for 17% of btc, and we know that btc is as much volatile, losing 17% or 25% wouldn't terminate it. Also, many believed, me included, that those guys probably didn't have enough cash backing and were printing money. The fact that they have an equivalent to show, it's not so much of a scandal compared to expectations. The question I have is, will they keep buying btc if its price crashes and sell it if its price goes up, to balance their books?
Are the info about the 96% crypto holding even accurate? In here they say 1.64% is digital tokens: Tether (Finally) Releases Breakdown Of Its $42 Billion In Crypto Reserves (forbes.com)
No, because Tether propping up BTC is a fantasy proposed by the Tether Truthers. As Omid Malekan so rightly points out (in the article above), why would they (Tether bosses) prop up BTC when they own hardly any of it (in relation to the total cap of BTC)?