[incrudible]

> Certainly with $100T it would work.

That's more dollars than are in existence, by the narrower money supply definitions.

> I was surprised how little reserves seemed to be needed to make Tethers work.

An ordinary bank has maybe 10% reserves. Tether had a whopping 70%, if you assume that this money actually exists.

Of course it could all be make-belief. You can fool some of the people, all of the time.

> But at some point currency traders will get involved and find ways to short the new currency.

That's not necessarily a problem. You can do that with Tethers and wait for some big dump to lower the price. As long as the currency is backed by withdraw-able US-dollars, there's little opportunity for profit, it just doesn't make sense to sell low.