USDT won't collapse not any time soon just because of its nature. It equals 1 dollar that is the argument we were made to believe but the issue is when bitfinex was hacked and about 30 million USDT was stolen, was the same amount stolen from their bank account? Obviously no and they didn't even feel it be cause they could just create additional 50 million USDT without anybody setting limit for that.
It simply shares the same characteristics with fiat because despite the million of notes that is being shred on a daily basis, they just print more, if the value drops as a result of inflation, they increase minimum wage and simply print more notes which means it won't crash.
they cannot do that. if 30 million USDT is stolen, obviously the attacker immediately traded for another coin and withdrew them hence they now have a $30 million obligation (loss) to their customers.
usdt is not the feds, new money is not printed because the ticker existsThat is exactly what they can do and that is why there is no noise of what went down. 30 million if withdrawn at once is not enough to change the direction of the market. The exchange that was hacked in Japan where over $700 million was taken, there was still no effect on price not to talk of a 30 million USD effect. Another reason is that, the attacker does not hack and leave it on the exchange site, its taken out because if its still on the exchange site, it would have been tracked and found couple with withdrawal of such amount from a single account will need manual processing which of course will need some investigation.
All of the money we have in our banks account are not backed by cash its when you withdraw because someone else is depositing that is when you have cash. Imagine everyone wants to withdraw their money at once, that is when you know that its just numbers we have and not real money and the same thing is going on here.
at the end of the day, they are responsible for the $30 million loss it'll simply be taken out of their profit when customer withdraws. They definitely feel the loss. It is an account payable. They might have replenished the tokens, however it will be counted against their income statement as losses in order for their balance sheet to balance.
banks are different, banks are in the business of fractional reserve, exchanges are not. Banks lend out money they don't have in order to maximize their profits and hence why they cannot afford a bank run. Exchanges have easily liquidable assets, if people can't get fiat out in an exchange because they don't have enough in the bank for whatever reason, customers will simply withdraw them in crypto, take them elsewhere and cash out. usdt will still be a safe $1.00.
The reason why I trust large exchanges even if they are my worst enemy is because of the amount of fees they make. $2billion marketcap for USDT is nothing when the top dozen exchanges can cumulatively do almost $10 billion in trades in a single day. In trading fees alone that comes out to tens of millions every single day. unlike mt. gox, There isn't even an incentive for them to runoff.
What I am saying is, your deposit risks (regardless if it's fiat or coins or tokens) is with the exchange, if they don't pay, gets hacked, runaway usdt is no riskier than any other coins.
There are no scenario in which usdt would not be valued at $1.00 since it can always be exchanged for tokens of equivalent value of the site.
Imagine you go to a casino and have $10,000 worth of poker chips (usdt) that can be redeemed for exactly $10,000 USD or $10,000 worth of gold (btc) or silver (ltc).
a robbery occurred and half of the casino's money is gone. They no longer have enough money on hand to cashout everyone in fiat. Do you think your $10,000 worth of poker chips is now worth $5,000?
no, because you can still redeem them for $10,000 worth of gold and take that gold elsewhere to exchange them for cash.
Now let's say, everything is gone. no gold, no silver, no cash, nothing. casino runsaway overnight. Then it doesn't matter what asset you have deposited there, whether it's poker chip (usdt), gold (btc), silver (ltc).