1. A lot of newly 'minted' Tether's are being used to buy Bitcoin (so prop it up, the Bitcoin price rises).
2. Possibly as a next step, these now more valuable bitcoins are than sold for real money, and the owners of bitfinex/tether pocket this real earned money as profit.
3. It should be noted that although the total amount of tether is still rising, the total amount of all "stable coins" is rising a lot faster, so basically, outpacing the growth of tether: the market seems to be on to them, and puts more trust in other stable coins. Personally, I like Maker's DAO decentralised SAI stable coin a lot. But preferences vary.
4. Why is there any demand at all for any stable coin? Can't a person just send/receive real dollars/euros? Answer: No .
There are a lot of unbanked people in the world, more than we in our western minds would dare to guess, I think.
Look at El Salvador: in 6 weeks since officially adopting Bitcoin as a currency (next to the US dollar, not replacing it mind you) the number of people that now have "wallet" software running on their phone is already lager then the number of people who over the past 20 years were able to open a bank account.
A few things.
First off, a "wallet" is really a bank account, albeit one at a shadow bank (i.e., unregulated bank). In the case of the Chivo wallet, I think I read somewhere that it's actually storing the USD not as USD but as Tethers. I don't have independent verification of that off-hand, though.
Secondly, the numbers of users are being quoted by Bukele, without independent verification. I have some skepticism of the veracity. Although I will note that the Google Play Store indicates "1,000,000+" downloads. Opening a Chivo wallet came with a $30 giveaway, which gives a motivation to open one up just to claim a pretty sizeable prize--and also a motivation for scammers to do it for you, hoping you won't notice.
Thirdly, there's evidence that it's being little used. More recently, they "negotiated" with the largest gas stations to give a 20¢/gal discount--suggesting that use without promotional offerings is poor. And 93% of businesses report not having anyone attempt to use it.
Overall, this suggests that the adoption of Bitcoin hasn't been a wildly positive success.
Nobody uses Bitcoin, only 1 small country
I'll bet you haven't travelled in the developing world either.
I have.
I met tons of unbanked people, nearly all because they don't have any money. And the ones that do aren't going to invest it in "some app on their phone".
> the number of people that now have "wallet" software running on their phone
And what is the median balance on those wallets?
I think it's DAI now.
But the US Govt gets to print dollars. That’s how that works, for better or worse. Tether does not get to print dollars (which is what they are doing by claiming they are “fully backed”).
First 1USDT should equal the value of 1USD, so any drop in value of the USD would also be a drop in USDT purchasing power.
Second, 1USDT backed by less than 1USD in value is obviously worth less than 1USD no matter what happens to the USD.
Third, the charter of the fed, created by congress, is to maintain a low fixed rate of inflation and maximal employment (along the Philips curve). They adjust the supply to meet this objective. Tethers goal is to pump the bags of early crypto entrants to simulate - and stimulate - liquidity to the benefit of the few.
Indeed. The us currently has in its coffers a $29T hole [1]
Perhaps this is the reason?
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My personal suspicion is that when a trivially distressed asset is valued at or above par by smart people that those people expect a bailout/recapitalization.
(Sidebar: USD is special among “fiat” currencies at the moment because its backed by the world’s largest military. Having guys with guns show up if you refuse to treat something as valuable is a pretty compelling argument to treat that thing as valuable.)
There were rumors that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was looking to start pricing their oil exports in something other than dollars...
But the implied threat towards anyone who say, started dumping US sovereign debt, or transacting petroleum in EUR, or whatever is very real. Countries have been liberated for less.
> The dollar has value primarily because taxes inside the US are denominated in dollars.
The amount of USD reserves outside US is huge. Entities that hold these reserves have no interest in paying taxes to US government.
But most importantly, there's Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has no military except the US military, and Saudi Arabia prices oil in dollars. It isn't conceivable that they could price oil in another currency and still receive protection from the US (i.e., continue to exist).
The US kind of "has" to continue this arrangement because if the world stops trading oil in dollars, the demand for dollars plummets and the dollar crashes because there are just too many dollars out there. The Fed can't "suck in" all that excess money without causing a severe recession/depression.
I dont mean the power behind it and stuff.
But crypto basically left the gold standard itself a long time ago!
Cryptos often have limited supply but have no floor on demand. For USD to go to zero, the United States as we know it would have to collapse. Most cryptos could go to zero with no real world change aside from people finding a different asset to speculate on.
There are 6500 cryptocurrencies today. Anyone would wanted to create a new one, could in an instant.
How long will that last? Miami and El Salvador are already proving you wrong.
> For USD to go to zero, the United States as we know it would have to collapse
Not if your government and country switches to crypto before the fiat collapse.
Right before the housing crash, most the in-industry folks were fully aware it was unsustainable, but they felt it would continue long term. Same goes for tether, majority of those involved in crypto know what they are doing, and the pump-up effect it's had to crypto.
Not at all.
While those at the executive level have some awareness, the rank and file that I interact with at crypto companies barely understand the tech, and have no knowledge at all of the environment. It's flabbergasting.
Even if they started as a scam and were a few billions out of parity, 2021 gave them a lot of additional runway, allowing them to recompose their reative parity to the USD.
For instance, they could be 80% backed at the start of the year, and after 2021 cash inflows so far they could have gone up to 93% backed by simply doing nothing.
They could also be <50% backed at the start of the year and <50% backed now...
No one really knows.
