The reality is that the market expects solvency for the foreseeable future, and tether solves a market problem (liquidity in environments that do not impose the KYC laws required by the US government to trade USD), thereby allowing Bitcoin users to achieve a level of anonymity while still having liquidity. It also, of course, allows a wider variety and leverage range of financial instruments.
Because betting either way in a manipulated market is a sucker's game. Bitfinex has their finger on the scales. Why on earth would I bet in their casino?
Does anyone other than Bitfinex even allow you to short USDT? Remember those two are one and the same, and Bitfinex doesn't even have banking. What are they going to pay my USDT short in? USDT?
It's popular to shit on cryptocurrencies these days, and they certainly have their shortcomings, but they are still fascinating systems and the markets are even more interesting. Instead of intellectual discussion, people seem to flood the comments with hate and jealousy, presumably because some people made more money than them due to presumed luck.
Is it possible that somebody will make money speculating on cryptocurrencies? Sure. Some people make money from MLM schemes too. But ultimately these are negative-sum activities: more money goes in than comes out. And a lot of the money going in is from suckers being taken for a ride. I think there's nothing wrong with people being negative about that.
> Matuszewski told On the Brink's Nic Carter that the idea of tethers driving the price of bitcoin significantly higher is "not true whatsoever."
> "I say this as someone who created and redeemed billions of tether over the course of my life and specifically created it in 2017," he said.
> In short, Matuszewski affirmed that there were incentivizing events for the generation of Tethers. Bitfinex didn't print Tether out of nowhere either, since Matuszewski said he himself was one of the drivers.
> “I can tell you that billions of dollars were sent in to make it like that," he said. "I can 100%, without question, verifiably guarantee it happened. I did it, I was there...That money wasn't just being hypothecated. It wasn't just coming out of thin air, that was happening."
I worked for Circle, I worked with Dan, and I can guarantee you that Dan (former head of Circle Trade, the second largest crypto OTC desk) knows his stuff, and Tether is nowhere near as sketchy as your posts and conspiracies would have you believe.
Great! Then an audit should be right around the corner, yeah? Or did we forget when their last auditor quit [1].
> "I say this as someone who created and redeemed billions of tether over the course of my life and specifically created it in 2017," he said.
Tether's terms of service: "The right to have Tether Tokens redeemed or issued is a contractual right personal to you. Tether reserves the right to delay the redemption or withdrawal of Tether Tokens if such delay is necessitated by the illiquidity or unavailability or loss of any Reserves held by Tether to back the Tether Tokens, and Tether reserves the right to redeem Tether Tokens by in-kind redemptions of securities and other assets held in the Reserves." [2]
Translation: Redemptions not guaranteed.
> I worked for Circle, I worked with Dan, and I can guarantee you that Dan (former head of Circle Trade, the second largest crypto OTC desk) knows his stuff, and Tether is nowhere near as sketchy as your posts and conspiracies would have you believe.
I'm sure the NYAG disagrees. [3]
Likely in no small part because one large market participant doesn't validate a fraud. They would be hugely incentivized to provide Matuszewski service so that he could go on record and say exactly this kind of thing. I'm sure the same quotes could be attributed to big players in the Madoff case.
So, in short: [audit needed]
[1] https://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/news/cryptocu...
[3] https://cointelegraph.com/news/new-york-ag-finds-it-perverse...
