It just looks like working backwards from having your mind made up and trying to convince yourself tether is the secret key that explains it all.
It certainly seems that way to me.
What article? You mean Amy's blog post?
And I guess it's 'great' in that having worked your way back, this helps to explain the world? I'm familiar with all of their 'work'. They all suffer from exactly the same issue as is going on right here. They're looking for an angle to take decentralised crypto down. They'll talk about Tether/Bitfinex today - and tomorrow it will be something else. Having watched Roubini's interview, you think he sounds like he has a modicum of objectivity? Take a look at his twitter feed - the guy is obsessed.
Imagine that Tether has been around (in one form or another) since 2014 and yet, these guys are making a meal of it only now. The crypto community has had concerns with regard to Tether for years. It's nothing new. Ironically, they're not necessarily the very same concerns. The fact is that as it's centralised, it represents a risk by virtue of that centralisation. Having any sort of dependency on a centralised entity flies in the face of what decentralised crypto is all about. The irony is that whilst it could be a bad actor, there is no clear evidence that it has acted in bad faith for the most part.
There are academic studies that suggest market manipulation but what you guys or any of those 'esteemed' critics have failed to mention is that there are also academic studies that have emerged with the polar opposite finding. But hey, why should we bother to mention that?
On the occasions that it has erred to date, that has come about as a direct result of the actions of the international banking system (leaving them shut out - high and dry on a number of occasions) and US authorities (locking them out of their own funds). Having said that, I don't like crypto having any sort of dependence on a centralised entity. Tether has been a concern for me for a long time. There's no doubt but that certain bodies within the US want to take them down and one way or another, they will be taken down.
However, the market has grown and the dependency that the sector once had on Tether has long since passed. The use of stablecoins exploded in 2020. Whilst Tether remains the largest used, the stablecoin sector is broadening. There are a raft of other stablecoins available for use now. We had more news on that earlier today when the
OCC issued yet another crypto-positive interpretive letter in which it sets out that Banks can now issue stablecoins and host nodes to support such networks.
In terms of daily transaction volumes, Paypal and Grayscale account for multiple times that of Tether. So if Tether/Bitfinex is seen as an attack vector by someone in a powerful position, sure it will let some air out of the tyres but bitcoin and crypto are bigger than that. What doesn't kill it makes it ever more resilient.
