...And as long as Bitfinex and Tether aren’t redeeming USDT for USD, their bank accounts can stay well hidden. The short-lived USD/EUR banking through a third party account at a small Polish bank......that was just for show.
It looks like Tether has actually redeemed 30M $ of USDT for the first time. The outstanding supplyof USDT has dropped from 2.25 billion USDT to 2.22 billion USDT.
If the outflows of several USDT wallets of the biggest altcoin exchanges are any indication,
we can expect additional redemptions of USDT in the next few days
(see my post in the Wall Observer Thread for the details: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.29314991).
Maybe. I don't think it's that useful to speculate either way. With a centralized ledger like Tether, granting/redeeming USDT takes the click of a button, not the movement of real money. And at this point, $30M is just 1% of the outstanding supply. That supply inflated from virtually zero over a period when Tether and Bitfinex haven't been able to service wires. People have been waiting in the KYC queue for over a year now on Tether.to. There are countless reports of people unable to redeem USDT, who are told by Tether to sell it on one of their "partner exchanges" instead. And I'm hearing rumors that Bitfinex's Polish bank account (through Crypto Capital) has been closed. That seems likely: https://www.reddit.com/r/bitfinex/comments/7tm8rl/bitfinex_vs_bitstamp_support_tickets_518257_572764/
It's just not rational to have any involvement whatsoever with Tether or Bitfinex at this point. It doesn't matter how much USD they have "in reserves" or if a limited number of customers are able to cash out occasionally. When you consider why they were virtually blacklisted by the banking industry, and then you consider how long Uncle Sam's reach is (as they subpoena Bitfinex/Tether).....it looks bad.
Once the banking industry essentially blockaded them (and this was probably done at the behest of the US government), they became a de facto rogue exchange. They’ve got a massive target on their back. Anyone denying that is naive.
They already were firmly rogue. There isn't an exchange still going with such a chequered past and so much mystery surrounding it. After all this time virtually nothing is known about its true ins and outs.
Last year, we could have pointed to BTC-e as another example. We know how that turned out.
