Today in crypto, Tether is in discussions with a Big Four accounting firm to conduct a full financial audit, the US Treasury Department has officially removed crypto mixer Tornado Cash from its sanctions list. Meanwhile, crypto investors’ appetite for speculation is cooling, as rising scams and global geopolitical tensions dampen sentiment.
Tether seeks Big Four firm for its first full financial audit: Report
Stablecoin issuer Tether is reportedly engaging with a Big Four accounting firm to audit its assets reserve and verify that its USDT (USDT) stablecoin is backed at a 1:1 ratio.
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino reportedly said the audit process would be more straightforward under pro-crypto US President Donald Trump. It comes after rising industry concerns over a potential FTX-style liquidity crisis for Tether due to its lack of third-party audits.
“If the President of the United States says this is top priority for the US, Big Four auditing firms will have to listen, so we are very happy with that,” Ardoino told Reuters on March 21.
“It’s our top priority,” Ardoino said. It was reported that Tether is currently subject to quarterly reports but not a full independent annual audit, which is much more extensive and provides more assurance to investors and regulators.
However, Ardoino did not specify which of the Big Four accounting firms — PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Ernst & Young (EY), Deloitte, or KPMG — he plans to engage.
Tornado mixer dropped from US blacklist
The US Treasury Department has dropped cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash from its sanctions list, the agency said on March 21.
The removal follows a January ruling by a US appeals court, which said the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) cannot sanction Tornado’s smart contracts because they are not the property of any foreign national.
According to the January court ruling, “Tornado Cash’s immutable smart contracts (the lines of privacy-enabling software code) are not the ‘property’ of a foreign national or entity, meaning […] OFAC overstepped its congressionally defined authority.”
In a March 21 statement, the Treasury said OFAC removed several dozen Tornado-affiliated smart contract addresses on the Ethereum blockchain network from its sanctions list.
Tornado’s native token, Tornado Cash (TORN), was up around 60% on the news, according to data from CoinMarketCap. As of March 21, TORN has a market capitalization of around $73 million and a fully diluted value (FDV) of nearly $140 million, the data shows.
TORN is up around 60% on the news. Source: CoinMarketCap
Bitcoin speculative appetite declines as investors seek safety
Speculative appetite is vanishing from the crypto markets, as investors are looking for safer digital asset investments following the recent wave of memecoin scams and macroeconomic uncertainty.
Bitcoin’s hot supply metric, which measures the Bitcoin (BTC) aged one week or less, is down over 50%, from 5.9% at the end of November to just 2.3% on March 20, Glassnode data shows.
Bitcoin hot supply metric. Source: Glassnode
The metric’s decline signals an investor shift to safer investment positioning amid the recent market volatility, according to Ryan Lee, chief analyst at Bitget Research.
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