The transaction on May 19th looked like a buyback, but in reality it was governance suicide — the audit committee was directly paralyzed, only a few days left before the compliance deadline, and Tether's publicly listed company experiment is about to fail.

Crypto World News reports that Twenty One Capital, controlled by Tether, must resolve its independent director compliance issues by June 5; otherwise, it may be flagged as BC by the NYSE. Its stock price has fallen 83% over the past year. The trigger was the transaction on May 19: Tether acquired and canceled 89,106,748 Class A shares held by SoftBank, the governance agreement was terminated, SoftBank directors resigned, leaving the audit committee with only 1 independent member—contrary to the NYSE’s requirement for two independent members during the transition period.