You got it wrong. Tether is making 4% returns on their money, and this isn’t the 1.0 era anymore—it’s already the 2.0 era. The real 1.0 era was even earlier, when users were using $40 billion worth of USDT, but Tether only had $10 billion in reserves. During that wild era, Tether was like the Federal Reserve, issuing dollars out of thin air at zero cost. It was only later, when the SEC kept suing Tether, that they started maintaining full reserves and ended that era. Another company that used this method was FTX, but their outcome turned out very differently.