Tether volume, market cap,... is like 90% because of altcoins and 10% because of bitcoin and that is if i am generous since nowadays about 2-3% of Tether is actually coming from bitcoin trading.
It's rather difficult to say given how much fake volume there is on altcoin exchanges. There is a huge OTC Tether market in China which draws on BTCUSDT liquidity at Huobi, Binance, and Okex. Since 2018, downside BTC volatility drove the Chinese market away from BTC and towards USDT. Nothing to do with altcoins, which are plagued by fake volume on exchanges:
Quote
Chinese grey-market importers used to rely on bitcoin before the 2018 bear market, another OTC dealer, Roman Dobrynin, told CoinDesk. As the price was ever-growing, merchants and the intermediaries helping them buy crypto could make some extra money along the way.
But since the beginning of 2018, hoping that your bitcoin will still be worth the same or more at the end of the transfer became too risky.
“As the price was going down, tether became much more convenient to use,” said Dobrynin. “China is totally reliant on USDT, they trust in it a lot, plus it’s very liquid.” His own clients are mostly Chinese, and they usually find him by word of mouth, connecting via Telegram.
But since the beginning of 2018, hoping that your bitcoin will still be worth the same or more at the end of the transfer became too risky.
“As the price was going down, tether became much more convenient to use,” said Dobrynin. “China is totally reliant on USDT, they trust in it a lot, plus it’s very liquid.” His own clients are mostly Chinese, and they usually find him by word of mouth, connecting via Telegram.
https://www.coindesk.com/tether-usdt-russia-china-importers
Like Bloomberg, I see the massive expansion of Tether as very bullish. Once BTC emerges into a long term bull market (outside of this 2018-2020 range) we could see OTC Tether traders flood back into BTC, the same way they started leaving BTC in 2018.
