[SilasX]

Title is misleading; it makes it sound like Tether management is withdrawing some promise that USDTs can be redeemed at par. That would be much bigger news than the actual story, that they are trading for less than par.

Not that I’m recommending you touch tethers with a ten foot pole!

[akhatri_aus]

The very fact the price is under $1, and holding, means they're not defending the peg; There might be a promise that it's redeemable but if the price shows this for long enough, it means its broken.

[danmaz74]

I have no idea how this will work out, but IIRC USD stayed at like 0.93 USD for a few months some time ago, and then went back to parity and then occasionally above parity.

[brokensegue]

they can't withdraw any such promise because it never existed, right?

[stefano]

Yeah. Their TOS says that they're under no obligation of giving you dollars in exchange for tethers. In fact, no one has ever redeemed a single tether and there is no process in place to actually do it. Why people believe that 1 USDT = 1 USD is beyond me.

[philipov]

> Why people believe that 1 USDT = 1 USD is beyond me.

I imagine it's because Tether has an effective PR team.

[gruez]

>In fact, no one has ever redeemed a single tether and there is no process in place to actually do it.

It's called withdrawing at any of the exchanges that support tether.

[rspeer]

Can you actually "withdraw" Tether as dollars at these exchanges? Or can you just pass the buck by trading Tether for other cryptocurrencies?

[orthecreedence]

You cannot withdraw Tether. You can only trade it for something else on an exchange. Tether does not actually let you convert USDT -> USD. I wonder why.

[gruez]

Presumably you can. I personally do not have accounts at any USDT exchanges, so I can't personally verify that fact. Even if all of the USDT exchange don't accept USD withdraws (which itself is unlikely because nobody would provide sell volume to them), at the very least you can trade them for "real" USD on kraken (at a few percent discount).

[encoderer]

My understanding is that tether exists so you can sell your alt-coin position to something resembling USD in volatility, vs selling them for btc.

You can use USDT to buy ETH or BTC, and thats enables liquidity to USD fairly easily.

I'm not defending Tether, I'm just pointing this out because your comment makes it sound to me like a trap that nobody has gotten any value out of.

[brokensegue]

lots of people get value out of ponzi schemes too (until they don't)

[encoderer]

Not the point. Why not just play straight with the facts?

Nobody ever has to be able to redeem for dollars as long as exchanges keep making markets with usdt.

I have no position in tether, haven’t used it, just interested in cutting thru misinformation.

[brokensegue]

the exchanges aren't the ones tasked with defending the peg though.

[SilasX]

But it can mean they abandoned whatever pretense they were maintinaing that USDTs could trade at par, even in a wink-wink nudge-nudge sense. That’s what “Tether breaking” implies. (As opposed to “Tether losing value.”)

It’s the difference between a money market mutual fund officially “breaking the buck” vs shareholders marking them as being worth less than a dollar.