I decided in the interests of my crypto education to Google "Tether". What an eye opener. My read, but correct me where wrong, is as follows.
Tether is s crypto backed by real US $ reserves, or so say Tether; so that 1 Tether coin is worth 1 US $. (B/S are you watching? Note that Tether does not have a limited supply and is based on double trust - trust in Tether corp and trust in US $.) So what is it for? It is to enable crypto transfers of US $ so as to make the crypto exchanges fast but mostly because crypto exchanges find it difficult to have relationships with conventional banks. Tether is in effect the US $ banker for the crypto exchanges. As I understand it Tether has become more than that - it is now a significant part of the crypto exchange market - being responsible for as much as 50% of any price rises. So when you see the bitcoin latest price in $ you are probably really seeing its price in Tether coins.
Now by a remarkable coincidence the amount of Tether coins in existence more than doubled to over $2bn during the recent bitcoin downturn. Where on earth did the Tether company get that amount of US $ to maintain their claim that Tether is 100% backed by US $? The obvious suspicion arises. Was Tether in fact "printing" these coins (could happen even for non central bankers don't you agree B/S?) so as to support the bitcoin price? Does that explain the mini dead cat bounce? In the last 24 hours 1.7bn Tether coins were transacted. Is that what is supporting the market? To fuel this conspiracy theory Tether is unable to provide audit proof that it has the US $ backing for these coins and in fact its accountants ditched them very recently and it is under investigation by the US authorities.
The Daily Telegraph predicts that if Tether is exposed as not having these reserves then there would be an immediate 80% fall in the bitcoin price. Does anybody really believe that Tether has those US $ reserves backing its coins? I think
Boss the timing of the burst is becoming clearer - weeks rather than months.
tecate you are right, Tether is the key to all this, and I respect your judgement for getting out until (if) it gets sorted. People like
jman will of course continue to see bull signs, no hope there I'm afraid.