[CapmCrackaWaka]

The Gist is that Tether is a cryptocurrency that is supposed to trade at 1:1 USDT:USD. Every tether (their currency denomination) issued is theoretically backed by 1 USD. In 2017, Bitcoin prices soared in large part to the fact that so many people were trading tether for Bitcoin. It turns out that Tether may have arbitrarily issued more USDT than USD they have on hand. Therefore, the buys of bitcoin were essentially fake - trading $0.75 USD worth of tether for $1 of Bitcoin (a Tether lawyer said that Tether only had 75% of the cash necessary to back their supply of USDT).

I'm not sure how it's supposed to affect current prices, however. Tethers are still around, and as far as I know, they have not submitted to an audit, but 1 USDT is still trading for 1 USD.

[microtherion]

> Tethers are still around, and as far as I know, they have not submitted to an audit

They promised to produce documentation that should shed significant light on the situation by January 15 of this year [0]. In recent days, they have issued up to $800M tokens a day [1].

Which either means that everything is going just swimmingly, or that somebody is stuffing a few more suitcases with cash while heading for the airport. We may soon find out.

[0] https://cointelegraph.com/news/ny-attorney-general-expects-d... [1] https://twitter.com/usdcoinprinter/status/134612804290579251...