In a recent interview, Jerry Fragiskatos, Chief Commercial Officer at Input Output Global (“IOG), the blockchain technology firm responsible for the development of Cardano ($ADA), explained what makes Cardano different from many other blockchain projects.

According to a report by The Daily Hodl, Fragiskatos made his comments during an episode of Scott Melker’s podcast that was released one week ago.

Fragiskatos said:

“Another big differentiator of Cardano is that there are not many insiders. If you look at the distribution of ownership of ADA, it’s primarily individuals. There are very few whales, very few insiders. There were no VCs that took 30%,40%, 50% of it. So that’s another very different thing, which again, just comes from the mission vision and cascades down. The VCs [who are] like, Where’s my ROI next year? Sorry, where’s my ROI next quarter? If it’s not there, they’ll say it’s a ghost chain. Plus they are also paid off by our competitors. And they’re also incentivized to create that FUD [fear, uncertainty and doubt].

“I think time will tell, and I think we’re taking the right approach. And I think we will be one of the ones that come out the other side of this, including some of the more you know, do things quickly and break fast.“

As Olga Hryniuk, who works in the Marketing and Communications department IOG, reported on 9 December 2022 in her company’s latest Cardano Weekly Report, there are currently (as of the date of the report) 108 projects launched on Cardano, 1,151 projects building on Cardano, 7.2 million tokens, and 4,347 Plutus scripts; also, there have so far been over 55.3 million transactions.

Currently (as of 7:47 p.m. UTC on 11 December 2022), $ADA is trading around $0.313, up 0.32% in the past 24-hour period.

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The world’s largest US dollar stablecoin, Tether (USDT), today announced its first attestation report in six months. The report disclosed that Tether had decreased its commercial paper holdings – short-term commercial debt – by 17% from December 2021 through March 2022, from $24.2B to $19.9B.

Tether said it has decreased its commercial paper holdings by a further 20% since the start of April. That would mean that about $16B of commercial paper backs the $74 billion stablecoin. The attestation, from accountancy firm MHA Cayman, said that USDT is backed by assets that amount to at least $83 billion.

Tether replaced much of the commercial paper with U.S. treasury bills – debt from the U.S. government – and a “significant average maturity reduction with [a] focus on more short-term assets.” The company has also increased the average quality of its commercial paper from A-2 to A-1. A-1 is commercial paper issued by companies that ratings agencies believe are the least likely to default on their debt payments.

“This latest attestation further highlights that Tether is fully backed and that the composition of its reserves is strong, conservative, and liquid. As promised, it demonstrates a commitment by the company to reduce its commercial paper investments,” said Paolo Ardoino, the CTO of Tether, in a statement.

Unlike traditional money market funds, Tether has never disclosed whose commercial paper it holds. This means that investors do not know if the backing is well-diversified, and what kind of financial crash could wipe out the stablecoin. Ardoino told the Financial Times has disclosing Tether’s backing would reveal its “secret sauce”.

The second most popular stablecoin, USDC, is backed entirely by “cash and short-dated U.S. government obligations.” Up until its collapse, UST was backed by the confidence that an associated network token, LUNA, would help prop up the token. When Terra’s US dollar stablecoin, UST, depegged this month, so did Tether, which slid to $0.95 before regaining parity with the US dollar.