[_jjkk]

1. Bitfinex processes a USD deposit and dispenses USDT

2. USDT holder purchases BTC with it

3. Bitfinex purchases crypto (mostly BTC) with the USD, instead of holding it as promised

Thus the original USD of the person buying BTC at the exchange has effectively double the buying pressure on the BTC market because Bitfinex is actively investing all their USD holdings that "back" Tether into the market as well.

[hntrader]

Good explanation. Why do they do step (3)? Aren't they just opening themselves up to massive legal liability?

[_jjkk]

Some believe this is an intentional Ponzi scheme to print some money for the owners of Tether and Bitfinex, others believe they had good intentions at first, but through bad investment or otherwise got underwater, and started "investing" their USDT-backing dollars to claw back up.

Bitfinex originally denied relation to Tether but it's been proven that was a lie.

The worry is, at some point there could be a "run" on Tether, when the curtains are pulled back, where all the USDT-BTC traders who happen to have USDT holdings and they suddenly become worthless because nobody wants to trade USDT-BTC anymore at 1-1.

As long as "public confidence" in USDT continues, the charade will too

[hntrader]

Another dumb question: If they've been buying assets like BTC using the USD that they were supposedly keeping as reserves, shouldn't they have made massive amounts of profits since 2018, and be in a position to now return the USD reserves so that it's 1:1, while keeping billions in profits for themselves?

[jcranmer]

If they haven't exited the BTC position, then selling the BTC to convert back into USD may not be possible without dramatically affecting the price. And if it's still in BTC and they don't bother converting back into USD until the last minute, then a run on USDT may make it impossible for them to convert enough BTC to USD fast enough to redeem USDT.

It's hard to analyze Tether/Bitfinex's risks here because, well, they have been fairly opaque about what their actual financial situation is, so people are relying on their gut instincts to guess what it is.

[hntrader]

USDT has a market cap of $35bn, let's say that 30 percent is unbacked and the corresponding USD was used to buy BTC. That's a position of at least $11bn. It's probably worth more than that now, since the price went up after they supposedly bought in, but they only need to liquidate $11bn to return the USD to their reserves to make it 1:1 again.

The market cap for BTC is $1000bn. Wouldn't they easily be able to unload the position over a 1-3 month period without too much price impact? They own 1 percent of the market cap, and in the stock market we often see larget stockholders than this unload their whole position without a catastrophic impact.

[WrtCdEvrydy]

You couldn't liquidate that much BTC without tanking the markets... it's a game of chicken if it's true that the USD backing tether is gone.