Hi guys,
i came across this article today
https://cryptovest.com/news/tether-has-a-field-day-with-125-million-usdt-minted/it got me quite worried on how the market can be manipulated by these people. Anyway, I don't quite understand the whole system, anyone know something about it? Are they minting USDT to keep the BTC price up artificially? Or am i missing something?
If you want to start a discussion on this, I would really appreciate it
The truth is nobody knows for sure.
If you take a careful look at Tether terms of service it clearly states that Tethers are irredeemable, fully centralized token that can be "printed" by central authority. The idea of Tether is to create blockchain bank where people will put fiat money in exchange for Tethers and then use Tethers to to trade across the exchanges without moving real dollars trhough conventional banking. If Tethers was redeemable it would essentially become a conventional banking and required to acquire licenses and follow banking regulations, but since there is no way to legaly redeem tethers for dollars 1:1 you can buy Tethers for USD, and buy coins for Tethers. There is no other purpose. If you think about that it may be an interesting Idea but as you can see there is no reason for anyone to ever sell BTC for Tethers, there is only reasons to sell Tethers for BTC (because you can't do anything else with Tethers) yet people keep trading with Tethers, trying in the end of the day have some profits in BTC.
Tether reserves.
For tether to be legit two things should be achieved:
1. Tether should be backed 1:1 with real USD sitting in the bank
2. Tether should be officially redeemable 1:1
Right now there are nor definite proof nor definite debunk of either points. Earlier this year Tether released paper where independent audit firm stated that Tether indeed have access to the 400+ mln of USD, but that paper can't be constituted as an audit (it's a note that says it can't be constituted as an audit on it's cover). Also it is not clear what is the state of those money and company's obligations, neither it shows banks or jurisdiction of those reserves.
Without full transparency and throughout audit of Tether it is impossible to say for sure if minted tethers were backed or they were just minted. So suspicions are high but not backed by definite proof.
Also tether.to service closed customer registration, and not doing any deposits/withdrawals.