The first sentence in the white paper of Tether (USDT) says the following. A digital token backed by fiat currency provides individuals and organizations with a
robust and decentralized method of exchanging value while using a familiar accounting unit.
Now don't get me wrong. I use USDT a lot, in fact I love it. The fixed price of $1 while being a cryptocurrency makes crypto transactions for purchasing services easy and beautiful.
But I keep thinking of how original paper money was created. In history we had gold for trading. Then gold became inconvenient so bankers offered to hold gold for paper that verifies how much gold is owed to customers. Then this paper became more convenient and was used instead of gold with the trust that its backed by gold. Then this paper a long time later became a currency that isn't backed by gold anymore.
Could the same happen with USDT. If everyone decided to claim original $$$ with their USDT, would Tether Limited issue it all making the price worthless?
Anyway the point I am trying to make is that Tether (USDT) is centralized around the Tether Limited's will to keep it going. This company is basically like a bank too.
Tether's claims that its stablecoin is "decentralized" is just another scheme to attract people into it. Deep inside, it's all centralized as the company has the power to freeze or restrict access to your funds at will. It has been shown over time that Tether has "blacklisted" several USDT addresses on the Ethereum blockchain. This greatly defeats the purpose crypto and Blockchain technology was created for. The Tether's stablecoin is nothing more than "Central Banking 2.0".
For anyone's reference, here's a detailed list of all ETH addresses with USDT tokens that were banned by Tether:
https://explore.duneanalytics.com/public/dashboards/3zhIaRUCFgmZMKqHG0pguvSvw1aOGL8gxFtZ2ujf. According to the site, there had been a total of
209 banned addresses on the ETH blockchain. This shows us how heavily centralized USDT is. But most people don't care about this, as they prefer convenience above all else. After all, Tether's stablecoin is the #1 Fiat-pegged asset on the crypto market. Despite its inherently-centralized design, the stablecoin enjoys of a large ecosystem of apps and exchanges backing it every step of the way. Ultimately, decentralized stablecoins (like DAI and bitUSD) will fulfill the purpose of crypto/Blockchain technology. They won't be able to gather massive adoption in the mainstream world (as Tether is in the spotlight right now), but they're proven alternatives for those looking into censorship resistance above all else. I wouldn't be surprised if Tether's USDT stablecoin goes down the drain in the future.
Nonetheless, many things can happen from Tether shutting down its operations to a full government crackdown. That's what you get with a centralized stablecoin which is no different than traditional Fiat (USD, EUR, etc.). As long as people continue to patronize centralized projects and exchanges, the crypto/Blockchain industry will be unable to fulfill its true purpose (which is to eliminate the middleman from the system). Time will tell us how long Tether (USDT) will last in the crypto/Blockchain space. Just my opinion