Tether turned on the printing press again

Tether Ltd, which issues a digital asset pegged to the US dollar, has issued another 250 million USDT.

Tether cryptocurrency, the price of which is pegged to the US dollar in a 1:1 ratio, has been criticized more than once since its launch and has earned a controversial reputation. 

Tether is a cryptocurrency that uses the Bitcoin blockchain to conduct financial transactions and is pegged to fiat currencies, in particular the US dollar, euro and Japanese yen. For each currency there is a token identical to its index, but with the suffix “T”: USDT, EURT, JPYT. The tokens are issued by Tether Limited, which claims to have $2.538 billion in deposits in its bank accounts and that each token is backed by a real reserve. However, the Tether printing press hardly stops. Last year, almost every week for eight months, Tether issued 100 million USDT to the market. The uncontrolled issue was stopped on January 23 due to a subpoena from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. However, on March 21, 300 million USDT was again released onto the market.

The Tether cryptocurrency is actively used by exchanges, since it allows one to abandon the use of fiat and create trading pairs with pseudo-fiat, thus bypassing regulatory requirements. 

Many skeptics accuse the company of market manipulation by using its own printing press to artificially increase cryptocurrency rates. Thus, the previous issue of 300 million USDT in March affected the Bitcoin rate, although there is no direct evidence confirming Tether’s participation in the BTC rally.

In the camp of critics of Tether is the famous economist Nouriel Roubini, aka “Doctor Doom.” Thus, Roubini earlier this year accused Tether of artificially inflating the Bitcoin exchange rate through additional USDT issues. Otherwise, in his opinion, the first cryptocurrency would have collapsed by 80%. He directly accused the company of criminal market manipulation. The main critic of Tether has repeatedly drawn attention to the huge amounts of USDT issued and the fact that in fact they are not backed by anything. Experts are still finding it difficult to name the reason for the next issue. They also assume the beginning of the next jump in the Bitcoin rate and the possibility of investing in another promising altcoin and the need to keep the Tether rate around $1 to ensure cheap transactions.