66% of all Tether (USDT) have been printed in the last 6 months

Lots of people want to hold bitcoin, because it might be a great investment.<p>Lots of people want to hold USD, because it has the backing of the world&#x27;s largest economy.<p><i>Nobody</i> wants to hold USDT.<p>The only use for it is as an in&#x2F;off ramp for bitcoin (where it is used only briefly). <i>Or</i> as part of a probably-illegal scheme where Tether Inc uses bitcoin as collateral to issue a loan to buy more tethers...

&gt;75% of USDC, which is audited, has been printed in the last 6 months, so not surprising, or indicative of anything sketchy that USDT would be growing at a similar rate.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;coinmarketcap.com&#x2F;currencies&#x2F;usd-coin&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;coinmarketcap.com&#x2F;currencies&#x2F;usd-coin&#x2F;</a>

Tether&#x27;s collapse will be to Mt Gox what Little Boy was to a firecracker.

Apparently the size of Tether seems huge, 34 B$ of dollar-denominate liabilities, but Binance, the largest exchange, has most fiat customer deposits in USDT. Moreover, in the last year futures trading has moved from Bitcoin margined to USDT margined and it is very profitable. So I wouldn’t be surprised if large funds are trading those future markets and they require USDT.<p>But offcourse it could still be insolvent if they issued too much or simply made insolvent if the assets (t-bills, cd) backing the issuances are frozen from US authorities. Just assume that as a known risk and plan accordingly

Another important takeaway from this data is that Tether is printing ~$500 million per day.<p>That&#x27;s an incredible amount of (probably) fake money being pumped right into the market.<p>3 days of Tether is equal to Tesla&#x27;s whole investment.

Who is holding all this tether? I fully get the usecase of buying tether for usd, then going to an exchange to buy Bitcoin, there the exchange might briefly hold the tether, but would they not go back and convert the tether to dollars rather than hang on to it?<p>Or are we really in a scenario where the majority of the usd pumped into crypto are held by tether and only “IOU’s” at the exchangs? And a crash in tether would simultaneously pull a my gox on almost all exchanges?

I don&#x27;t know what percent of Tether&#x27;s funds are actually backed by USD. And I don&#x27;t trust them as a company.<p>But lets look at the economic game theory of it:<p>- There is currently no premium on Bitcoin prices on Tether exchanges vs non-tether exchanges (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.untether.space&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.untether.space&#x2F;</a>)<p>- USD&#x2F;USDT pairs can be traded on legit exchanges like Kraken and are currently trading evenly<p>If the theory is that unbacked Tethers drive up Bitcoin prices, then we should see a premium on Bitfinex&#x2F;Binance, because that&#x27;s where buying demand should prop up first. A premium doesn&#x27;t exist at the moment.<p>And further, lets say Tether is exposed and crashes. We would expect that users race to buy Bitcoin with their bad USDT and withdraw. The only bag-holder is whoever is using USDT. Bitcoin holders would suffer in the short term as speculators become cautious, but technically should not be affected other than a couple of albeit large crypto gateways potentially going under.

Is this still a thing? I thought we cracked down on Tether already?<p>Is that why BTC is 55k?

I am absolutely befuddled. Why are we letting this happen? Who is holding this hot potato and why?<p>Drop tether now. The more people hold it, the more damage it will do when it implodes.

I thought some US prosecutors were going after Tether? What ever happened to that?

I wished people understood how Tether works. Bitcoin is up 6X this year , 600%. Many exchanges use Tether to onboard clients and that is why Tether is printed.<p>Tldr; Tether gets printed whenever Bitcoin demand goes up and that&#x27;s in their whitepaper.<p>For downvoters: You are downvoting facts and truth, quite far from your scientific beliefs. Just <i>read</i> the actual whitepaper and then come and downvote. Don&#x27;t repeat what you read or heard or think is obvious, obviously.

Because the dollar supply has also skyrocketed in the same time period.

2019 hackers - Bitcoin is going to collapse + downvoting anyone who beleive in bitcoin.<p>2021 hcakers - USDT is going to collapse + downvoting this.