Friedman LLP, a New York-based auditing firm, was also
subpoenaed by the CFTC after Tether hired it last year to
assess claims that Tether held enough U.S. dollars,
according to a person familiar with the matter. decentralized commodity
This is a misconception about cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum. Both are highly centeralized, in the hands of a tiny oligarchical ownership along with a small group of mining warehouses.
Take a freshly baked pie, and give half of it away for a suggested donation of $1 USD to the first 10 people who show up.
Now split the last half of the pie into smaller chunks and slowly give out bread crumbs to new "miners" with the requirement they spend large amounts of capital on exceedingly inefficient number guessing machines in order to win the lottery of "mining" more crumbs.
The 10,000 BTC pizza is a case study in how Satoshi designed the supply to rapidly dump very cheaply before other users were able to discover the network, by that time and later new users not only need to spend more to mine but less coins are produced for a correct lottery number.
Ethereum: