The point I wanted to make is that many (most?) retail customers deposited USD at a CEX like Binance/Bitfinex in exchange for USDT. So your retail fiat dollar didn't go directly to Tether Limited, the exchange bought liquidity from them.
Yes, those transactions would be off chain. If Tether accepted other assets then those would be what should show up on their balance sheets or attestations. I think they actually did collateralized lending against crypto assets. But still, they should be sitting on pretty large piles of something, and that's what's so weird, anyone who's looked seriously has found pretty much nothing except for a bit of cash in some island banks.
> So those would have been the parties who paid $ to Tether.
But not necessarily in fiat USD. They could've paid in any instrument, as long as Tether accepted it. That side of the transaction is, by definition, not recorded on any chain. Or am I misunderstanding the situation?
