Tether FUD always returns when there's an influx of a lot newcomers to Bitcoin. It's been debunked over and over. Here's one by Nic Carter that explains why these "takedowns" are completely wrong:
According to Tether's own transparency page [0], there's $30 billion of USD sitting in some random bank, somewhere. No, they haven't told anybody where it is, and they have never released an audit. Yes, they are still delaying the NY Attorney General's investigation [1]. We know that at least $850 million has been seized and lost for good [2]. No, they don't report that on the transparency page.
I present an alternate argument. First, Tether ToS says that their tokens are useless and nonredeemable, and their service is not available to US residents [0]. Second, the majority of BTC/XYZ trades on major exchanges are for Tether [1]. Third, as a stablecoin, the way it is supposed to work is that when USD is put into reserves, Tether creates USDT. When money is taken out of reserves, Tether will send the USDT to a bogus address to "burn" it. They have only burned a miniscule portion, much less than the $850m that we know has been seized [2]. My guess is that USDT is being pumped into high volume exchanges, and USD is coming out of low volume exchanges, and very little of USDT is backed by reserves.
> The right to have Tether Tokens redeemed or issued is a contractual right personal to you. Tether reserves the right to delay the redemption or withdrawal of Tether Tokens if such delay is necessitated by the illiquidity or unavailability or loss of any Reserves held by Tether to back the Tether Tokens, and Tether reserves the right to redeem Tether Tokens by in-kind redemptions of securities and other assets held in the Reserves. Tether makes no representations or warranties about whether Tether Tokens that may be traded on the Site may be traded on the Site at any point in the future, if at all.
> The following Persons are prohibited from depositing to, or withdrawing from, any Digital Tokens Wallet on the Site:
> any Person that resides, is located, has a place of business, or conducts business in the State of New York; and
> U.S. Persons.
[1] Volume charts and breakdowns are available in lots of places as the data is public, but the easiest chart is halfway down the right side of the page here. "Money flow from/to Bitcoin in the last 24 hours" https://coinlib.io/coin/BTC/Bitcoin
[2] there used to be a site called "omniexplorer" for navigating the Tether chain transactions, but it seems it went down. Now you have to piece it together using tools like blockchair, but it's far more difficult to read to find the coinbase transactions. https://blockchair.com/ethereum/erc-20/token/0xdac17f958d2ee...
By which means are the people paid who organize Tether? If they hand out tether effectively for nothing, who is paying for the infrastructure? If there is no payment, why would one not expect that they intend to run away with those $30 billion one day?
Additionally, if that bank goes bankrupt, the money is not secured.
What's the opposite of FUD, when people with a massive financial stake in something do nothing but tell everyone everything is great all the time, and never acknowledge any issues?
I think it's cool too, and have ~5% of my portfolio allocated to BTC, ETH and XRP.
But I don't go around pretending it solves all of the problems of the monetary system. It's better in some ways, and (much) worse in others. I also don't dedicate my life to pumping it on social media.
>It seems pretty natural to me that someone who believes in Bitcoin would also purchase it.
If only we'd have the same mentality with short sellers, but instead we label them FUD.
That doesn't deal with the fake $500 million per day that is being pushed in by Tether. That money has to be artificially inflating the price of Bitcoin. Unless you actually think $500 million per day of real dollars are being acquired by Tether, a company that has never been audited and is under investigation, when there are many legitimate stable coin alternatives such as USDC? You would have to assume that there is both a $500 million per day whale buying Bitcoin and that whale is unable to use more legal means.
Isn't this just saying that the BTC buying volume generated by Tether is less than what was claimed?
That's important to note, but where does he argue that the central and most important claim - i.e., that Tether isn't fully backed and is therefore liable to collapse like a house of cards - is false?
[0] https://wallet.tether.to/transparency [1] https://mobile.twitter.com/bitcoinlawyer/status/135164200602... [2] https://modernconsensus.com/cryptocurrencies/tether/feds-jus...