Usdt trades much higher volume than Usdc at Coinbase and Kraken US citizens are using Usdt more than Usdc https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/usd-coin/#Markets https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/#Markets
From what I've read, the banking system in Lebanon has collapsed, so no electronic payments, credit cards, banking, so Tether (and bitcoin and other cryptos) are the solution for a functioning shadow economy, i.e. trades of goods and services To some degree, similar Tether/crypto economy in Turkey and Argentina US $ and gold and other hard currencies from cross-borders and travelers
They haven't gone down because once Tether goes down, it's all over. Then it would be impossible to collect fines for the government as everyone would be bankrupt. It also wouldn't let the current entities in charge unload their bags on the unsuspecting retail. Even the CEO of bitcoin magazine said that it doesn't matter if Tether is backed or not. They are participating in a highly regulated financial activity with little to no regulatory oversight and no licenses/permissions and it's just a matter of time before the government takes action. And that is the best scenario - that they are actually backed. Everyone has been affected during all of these bankruptcies but Tether always posted "Tether unaffected. No losses". How magical. And they lent and invested money to Celsius i believe.. But no loses, huh? Not to mention that the CEO of Tether(Giancarlo) has stepped down.... This is the biggest red flag of all.
Nope. Stepping down fails in comparison to the criminal histories behind them. Most CEOs step down in the S&P 500s at some point, but how many of them have pre-existing criminal records? Giancarlo was the type of shyster that even had a criminal history of bootlegging Microsoft software to the public (no joke). https://cryptonews.net/news/legal/24673712/ As I always say... I'm sure they changed their ways at Tether, and all are just a trusty nice bunch of guys now. Changed the errors of their ways and you can 100% trust them on serious cash investments.
You know what guys I’ve been thinking … between ultra profitable tether buying bitcoin and the new spot ETFs buying bitcoin … I don’t think there will be enough bitcoin to go around.
With interest rates this high, how is this a red flag? A bank of course needs to do something with the money, and the depositors want interest as well. But all the USDT floating around out there is happily doing so without having to earn any yield. Its almost kind of crazy when you think about it. You're lending your money to Tether and not expecting any compensation, just the ability to move it around digitally. If you had $80B USD, you too could earn 5%, which $4B per year, and their income is only $2.8B. I do agree with you that back when rates were essentially 0%, risky loans perhaps had to be made, and maybe they prayed there wouldn't be any redemptions. Perhaps they could have also succumbed to the fate of the banks last March that didn't have enough liquid USD and their investments were marked heavily down. But nobody is redeeming USDT, and they have less than 1% of the costs of a bank. The correct question to ask is why isn't Goldman Sachs trying to issue their own stablecoin?
Plus MSTR, In 3 weeks between Blackrock and Fidelity only, they have already accumulated 107k bitcoins, extrapolate 26 weeks and that's over 1 Million bitcoins if the rate does not change, the likely scenario is that it would increase as more marketing and RIA's get educated with the spot ETF products Blackrock is not fucking around, taking in over 6k bitcoins yesterday more than the other spot ETF's combined Anyway, based on the numbers Blackrock & Fidelity, we could be looking at $150-$250k price per bitcoin within 6 months Of course I'm not wishful thinking or anything, will probably make over $1M on my MSTR call options expiring within 6 months