Good morning from the Financial Times.
Today is Thursday, November 27th, and this is your FT News Briefing.
Crypto just can't catch a break this week,
and India's booming steel production comes with a pretty unfortunate side effect.
Plus, if you haven't noticed, the UK budget is like the FT's World Cup.
We take it very seriously, so we're going to geek out over all of yesterday's numbers.
I'm Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day.
S&P Global is raising concerns about the world's biggest stablecoin.
The ratings agency released a note on Wednesday,
downgrading its assessment of Tether's assets from constrained to weak.
It's the lowest measure that S&P doles out.
Tether operates a dollar-backed stablecoin, often called USDT.
It's the biggest stablecoin with about $184 billion in circulation.
Now, this form of digital cash is usually backed by high-quality assets like U.S.
Treasuries.
But S&P flagged an increase in Tether's high-risk assets backing the stablecoin like Bitcoin,
precious metals, and corporate bonds.
Those now account for 24% of total reserves.
The ratings agency also warned about Tether's quote, limited transparency on reserve management.
Tether responded saying, it strongly disagrees with the characterizations presented in the report.