Tether is worth eleventy billion dollars, so people holding them seem to trust the backing to a certain extent.

Tether is available on several blockchains, adding another entity one must trust to hold the tether stable coin.

Why does tether need a blockchain? Couldn’t they just fork one and run a centralized ledger, since trust is still required?

But better, why don’t they just run a cashu mint, and then issue cashu tokens, allowing privacy, speed, and bearer instrument quality to their product?