[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.