From the borrowers, similar to a traditional bank https://aave.com/ Or you can go with a cefi platform such as Gemini, BlockFi, or Celsius, but the concept is the same as on the defi platform Some defi platforms like pancakeswap give much higher APY's, for providing AMM services (LPs) for coin-pairs trading Pancakeswap also provides over 100% APY on staking the CAKE tokens (if compounded daily or on a regular basis), but that comes from inflationary token emission. Comes with a higher risk but obviously higher rewards. I'm holding and staking over 6 figures $ amount of CAKE https://pancakeswap.finance/pools
Tether or USDC are not a requirement to buy btc, it just makes it more convenient It is not impossible to redeem Tether and I'm not sure what you mean by Bitfinex not legally obligated to payout fiat. The Exchanges are best positioned to redeem Tether to fiat as they have all their KYC/AML and legal team setup For regular folks like us who hold Tether, easiest method is to send to exchange (i.e. for US based , Coinbase) and exchange for US $ and wire to the bank
If you have 10K in Tether and you go to issuer to redeem it, they laugh at you. You need a minimum of 1 MM just to take you seriously but even then, redemption is at their discretion. So if they like you or you are a maffia boss, they redeem it, otherwise you are out of sheer luck. They are even honest about it, it is on their website that they can not be legally forced to buy back Tethers. Please note I was talking about redemption at the issuer not buying dollars with it.
I actually think you and I are in the same neighborhood, not quite eye to eye but close It's the reason I mentioned let the exchanges go through the redemption or whatever they need to do to get their "value" from Tether. They have the resources, the employees and most importantly, a powerful legal team or teams to get it done Let's say you have $10M worth of Tether and you want your fiat $ back in your account, why would you not use Coinbase to do the conversion and wiring the funds to your bank?
Sure. The point is that eventually somebody is going to end up holding a bunch of unredeemable Tethers. It is probably going to be a brokerage or a HF and lots of small investors, but the loss will be spread among them. My bet is that there was some kind of secret deal between Tether and any brokerage listing it. The brokerage got Tether for 50 cents for listing it, and the issuer got 50 cents for basically nothing. Good deal for both sides.
Very logical, if not the scammers would get scammed. The ultimate goal is to sells as much air in Tethers a possible. They know why they don't thake Tethers back.
And everyone turns blind eye on this travesty. Are we truly in Alice wonder land??? Money appearing out of nowhere along with very high yield for doing nothing.
We will have to wait and see if your hypothetical will come to fruition. Coinbase is a publicly listed company under very strict regulations, doubt they will get involved in something like that. Binance is too profitable I do think Tether and other stablecoins are competing or muddying the "official" Fed printing of $ and this may come to a head when the Fed creates the Fed coin aka US CBDC $
On a related note... ZIRP and NIRP vs DeFi high yields https://pomp.substack.com/p/stablecoins-institutions-and-defi