[random_rr]

I mean... are people worried about Dogecoin blowing up? Or any other coin? There is basically no problem here. If you don't believe in USDT... don't buy it.

It's like saying government-issued currencies are going to "blow up" because Zimbabwe keeps printing fat stacks. Don't hold Zimbabwe dollars - problem solved!

Traders want something like USDT for the utility it provides. I don't think most traders care about the backing of USDT or it's potential redeemability for USD. I think most people enjoy the utility of a token that is always ~1USD. There are other tokens that promise to bring the same utility to crypto (DAI, etc). If USDT disappears (as NZDT just did, RIP Cryptopia's bank accounts), another stable coin will fill the void.

So even if Tether explodes, and it's actually been running with 0 financial backing this whole time - uh, well, tell me how that's different from any other cryptocurrency that has exploded and imploded in the last few years? It would seem to me that the healthiest thing for crypto right now is to figure out Tether's financial health (so people can decide if they want to safely use it) - but I don't think the marketplace will feel any "shockwaves" from a possible collapse.

[simias]

The bigger conspiracy is that Tether might have been used to pump the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The theory goes something like this:

- Bitcoin starts dipping.

- Bitfinex/Tether generates millions of USDT out of thin air.

- They use them to buy Bitcoins, sending the price back up.

- Once the price is high enough they can sell a few of these Bitcoins they effectively got "for free" and make a ton of money.

A big proponent of this theory is "Bitfinex'ed": https://medium.com/@bitfinexed

[Canada]

How much Tether out of thin air would it take to do that? There's only $2B tether in total, but BTC alone trades $8B every day. And that's down a lot compared to the last few months.

[Nursie]

But that's not 8 billion of new money coming in to the system.

2 billion of new demand (almost a billion in January alone) is a hge deal.

[dragonwriter]

> I mean... are people worried about Dogecoin blowing up?

Dogecoin isn't used by exchanges as a vehicle to allow dollar-pegged ated trading without handling actual dollars, and Doge:BTC prices aren't treated by cryptocurrency price trackers as if they were, at some fixed multiple, USD:BTC prices.

USDT and Doge don't play a similar role in the ecosystem.

[random_rr]

That's interesting, my Cryptopia DOGE trading pairs (and LTC) beg to differ. Will there be a crisis of confidence if Doge crashes to 0 on Cryptopia? Of course not.

USDT is one of many trading pairs offered by crypto exchanges. It matters no more or less than NZDT, Dogecoin, Litecoin, Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any other common trading pair in the crypto world.

[dragonwriter]

> That's interesting, my Cryptopia DOGE trading pairs (and LTC) beg to differ.

How?

> USDT is one of many trading pairs offered by crypto exchanges.

USDT is not a trading pair, it's a single cryptocurrency. The issues that give it a special role, both tied to it's USD peg, is that:

(1) It is sometimes treated as equivalent to, and commingled with, USD by exchanges (notably, Bitfinex), and

(2) USDT:<X> trading pairs, on exchanges that don't handle USD lat all, are often treated by the community as if they were USD:<X> trading pairs.

(3) The special role USD has in world markets.

[Grangar]

Yes it does, because USDT is (supposedly) inherently pegged to the dollar. It's used as a vehicle for stability when normal banking is not available.

See: binance, liqui.io. These exchanges don't have fiat deposits/withdrawals. BTC is meanwhile taking all alts down with it.

[hluska]

There is basically no problem here?? There is an organization that claims its security is backed by an equivalent number of American dollars (thus promising relatively stable liquidity). Yet, this organization can't get through an audit and it's looking rather unlikely that that security is actually backed by anything more than website copy. And there is basically no problem here?

Tether has a special place in the cryptocurrency ecosystem that makes it completely unlike Dogecoin. This special place means that the types of sketchy things that Tether is doing could ripple through the entire ecosystem.

[random_rr]

Clearly there may be a massive problem for Tether. Outside of Tether - I'm not seeing the ramifications, other than exchanges are going to have to use different stable coins. I remember when LTC and FTC used to be legit trading pairs on exchange websites. Whether or not Tether is legit seems pretty uninteresting to me - my trading bots regularly go through thousands of USDT, and I've never once thought to myself "Oh, I can redeem this for 1USD." It's just a utility token, and if it dies, something will fill the void after a brief panic.

To me, this just seems very overblown.

[Nursie]

>> Outside of Tether - I'm not seeing the ramifications

Total liquidity in the market is probably a very small fraction of the market cap. If Tether has been pumping in fake liquidity, in effect creating fake demand, there could be a relative demand crash as that leaves the market, and there would be a relative fall in the (apparent) availability of USD.

That would add to the effect of people desperately trying to flee tether to the comparative safety of real US dollars, which is likely to mean the tether/BTC, tether/ETH tether/whatever rates rocket as people try to get out of positions on tether exchanges. Then a fall in the coin prices as said folks transfer to other exchanges and try to cash out to dollars. And given there are now fewer dollars in circulation than was thought, it could be a bloodbath.

If other exchanges are above board in their dealings, and the coins and cash are where they should be, and withdrawals don't grind to a halt, then that could be as far as it goes. If they aren't, and if they have trouble paying out, it could take exchanges down.

[pavlov]

Did the Lehman Brothers collapse affect anyone who wasn't their customer or employee?

Tether is big enough that it could send similar shockwaves.