Tether says its cryptocurrency is worth $2 billion—but its audit failed

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For months, critics have raised questions about tether, a cryptocurrency whose value is supposed to be "tethered" to the United States dollar. The company behind tether claims to have a dollar in the bank for every tether that's in circulation. And the Tether website claims that these cash holdings are "subject to frequent professional audits."

But those "frequent professional audits" have been slow in coming. The accounting firm Friedman LLP had been working on an audit of Tether and Bitfinex—a cryptocurrency exchange that is closely linked to Tether—since May. But last Saturday, Tether admitted to Coindesk that its relationship with Friedman had "dissolved."

"Given the excruciatingly detailed procedures Friedman was undertaking for the relatively simple balance sheet of Tether, it became clear that an audit would be unattainable in a reasonable time frame," a Tether spokesperson told Ars by email.