[sgpl]

While I wouldn't say that their reserve is matching now ( I do not know) there were a few threads on twitter that I read a while back that stated that the folks behind tether were increasing the supply (of tether) to artificially inflate the value of their bitcoin holdings - which is something that they could have liquidated in exchange for more fiat since then. Obviously this is all conjecture.

This is the best reference I could find in relation to what I've said above:

In newly published research, with Amin Shams of Ohio State University, he finds evidence that Bitcoin’s 2017–2018 bubble was inflated by a lesser-known digital currency called Tether. [0]

[0] https://medium.com/texas-mccombs/tether-connection-puts-bitc...