answered most of the questions. Given his position, the devil wasn’t in what he said, but how he said it.

Overall, it was a performance of deflecting questions, making legally true statements, and trying to sound legit AF while accusing “nocoiners” of creating “FUD”. Tether really needed to rebuild some goodwill with the coiner community.

Paolo Ardoino, while explaining how Tether can issue USDTs on weekends, says:

“most of our, uh, biggest customers are banked into the same bank (as Tether, i.e. Deltec)”.

It’s revealing how he paused after “most of our”, as he was about to say “most of our customers” – which would have been very weird. How come those hundreds of thousands of people who use USDTs all over the world could ALL have an account at a small banking institution in the Cayman Islands?

In fact, it’s not weird at all – Tether is calling “customers” a very small number of actual users, the ones Tether is issuing USDTs. The rest aren’t customers, they’re users. The distinction is very important, for Tether also says that they perform complete AML and KYC on their customers. This means that they know who are the people (some exchanges and OTC desks) to whom they issue USDTs; but after that first step, feel free to do whatever you want, the blockchain is your oyster!

Stuart also points out at the end of the interview that they don’t have US customers. Which also makes his claim that they’re regulated by FinCEN much less grand – after all, it’s not that hard to comply with regulations when none apply.

At the time Stuart had to swear on the NYAG affidavit, he admitted that Tether’s reserves were 74% cash and equivalents, the rest being an IOU from Bitfinex. He says, “USDTs are 100% backed by reserves, so the loan to Bitfinex is still good backing”, and later on, “so maybe people object to the amount of the backing, but it’s not nothing”. Oh it’s not nothing, case closed!

One thing is clear – these reserves aren’t cash. It can be whatever Tether wants, valued at prices convenient to them:

The rule of thumb is, whenever Tether talks about dollars, they don’t actually talk about dollars, but about their reserves, which aren’t dollars. Stuart says,

“[at the time of the affidavit,] other than $2.1B in reserves (and today, just for context, that amount has grown to $22B), Tether had cash and cash equivalents on hand representing approximately 74% of the current outstanding USDTs). Just note that that loan is now $550m out of almost $22B in reserves – 2.5% of the total.”

So we know the nature of 2.5% of their overall reserves – it’s the Bitfinex loan – but that doesn’t mean that the rest is cash. Why focus so much on such a small portion of their portfolio, then, if it isn’t to distract?

If you listened to the interview, you must have noticed how carefully Stuart is wording what he says, and the result is certainly very confusing for the average listener, who is entitled to believe they really have the $22 billion. I certainly heard exactly that, until I rewinded and listened to Stuart speak all over again.

Stuart also mentions “third party loans” as part of their reserves, like the loan to Bitfinex. Which is exactly how the fiat banking system works: banks will credit your account with new dollars if you sign an IOU. And it could very well explain how Tether ended up with a Bitfinex loan in the first place: Bitfinex needed 850m USDTs, didn’t have $850m, but simply signed an IOU for $850m. If you’ve seen the document, where Giancarlo Devasini, CFO of Tether and Bitfinex, signs both for Tether and Bitfinex, it’s epic.

Tether’s select few customers can access the USDT printer without any cash, and use the new USDTs for whatever they want. And you still wonder why Bitcoin has gone parabolic lately?

Peter McCormack asks them, point blank, if they own Bitcoin, and if they use Tether to pump Bitcoin.

As per the affidavit, Stuart confirms that they own Bitcoin:

“part of it is in Bitcoin; if nothing else, there are transaction fees, that need to be paid on the OMNI layer… we don’t presently comment on our asset makeup, overall, but we are contemplating starting a process of providing updates on that on the website this year”.

Note how Stuart doesn’t say that the only Bitcoin they have is for the OMNI layer transactions. So they have other Bitcoin as well? And by the way, why are supposedly segregated customer assets being used to pay for operational costs?

Peter insists, “What’s the process of the Bitcoin reaching your basket?”, and this time Stuart deflects, “Paolo, do you have any comments on that?”

Left alone neck deep in shit by his lawyer, Paolo has no choice but to ask Peter to change the question:

“Well, ummm… so… I’m not sure if the question is really clear. Are we talking about how we acquired the Bitcoin that we need to fulfil the OMNI layer transactions?”

No Paolo, the question was why do you have Bitcoin in your reserves, not why you have a few Bitcoin for clear operational reasons. Why don’t you want to answer it?

When McCormack asks Stuart if they buy Bitcoin on the market, “at the right time”, and then pump it with Tethers, Stuart replies,

“we don’t have the ability to buy Bitcoin at the right time in the market, we’re not prognosticators about wether the market’s gonna go up or down, that presumes some level of clairvoyance which we don’t have”.

Well OK but the question wasn’t if you can see the future, but if you buy Bitcoin – why deflect it in such a weird way?

Peter insists “people say that you have the ability to pump the market by issuing Tethers”, to which Stuart replies, “We don’t issue Tethers to buy Bitcoin. We issue Tethers to customers who want Tethers.” So if a customer that happens to be Bitfinex wants to pump Bitcoin with USDT, that’s fine.

Then Paolo answers with its own rhetorical question.

“The entire concept of us issuing Tethers to buy Bitcoins for ourselves doesn’t make sense. Why issue Tethers when we already have the dollars, and we have the ability to manage our inventory and out portfolio, when we could just use the dollars? The entire narrative is completely nonsense. Why do we have to do two steps when we can do one?”

To answer Paolo’s rhetorical question with another rhetorical question, may I venture,

“Why buy Bitcoins with real dollars, which are hard to get by, when you can simply print 20,000,000,000 USDTs that cost you nothing? Is it really because you’re too busy and want to save one step?”

Stuart boasts that all USDT redemption requests have always been met. Well, given Tether’s contract, that’s a pretty low bar:

The whole USDT contract is just incredible, when you read it. USDTs aren’t legal claims on Tether’s reserves. Maybe they are for Tether’s customers, who might have signed a different agreement with Tether. But if you’re not a Tether customer, USDTs are just digital toilet paper. You might be left with it forever on the blockchain, as a stark reminder that database entries without a contract in the real world, are utterly worthless.

not a traditional virtual currency. There are many things related to it that we will share with you in this article.

The cryptocurrency market is known for Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and other volatile digital assets. Most of them tend to have large fluctuations on a daily basis. Bitcoin, for example, can move several hundreds of dollars in just minutes.

As you can see in the image above, BTC tends to move a lot. This can be very inconvenient for many users that want to send and receive money across borders. Moreover, if you are a person that does not tolerate price fluctuations, then Bitcoin might not be the best option for you.

However, the cryptocurrency market has thought of a solution for those users that want to hedge against volatility. The solution is stablecoins, and Tether (USDT) is one of them.

Before we answer the question “What is Tether?” we need to understand the “stablecoin” term. Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies which price does not fluctuate or fluctuates very little. Stablecoins usually follow the price of a fiat currency such as the U.S. dollar (USD), the euro (EUR) or the British pound (GBP).

In order to do so, stablecoins are backed with a 1 to 1 ratio of fiat currencies. For example, if we have a stablecoin that follows the price of the British pound, each stablecoin will be worth 1 GBP. No matter how much volatility there is in the cryptocurrency market, the stablecoin will always be worth 1 GBP.

It will be the same as other stablecoins. You can see Tether (USDT), USD Coin (USDC) or other virtual currencies that are linked to the price of the U.S. dollar. Basically, each USDT is backed by actual assets on a 1-to-1 basis.

Tether (USDT) is the largest stablecoin in the world. This is the first thing you need to know. Tether follows the price of the US dollar. One USDT is worth one dollar. If you have 10 USDT, you can say that you have 10 dollars.

Due to the expansion that this virtual currency had in the market, nowadays is the most traded coin in the world. Even more than Bitcoin. This is the shortest answer to the ‘What is Tether’ question.

Tether was released to the market using the OMNI blockchain. In this way, USDT could be moved on-chain using Bitcoin’s underlying technology. However, over the last years, new USDT coins have been issued using other platforms, including Ethereum (ETH) and Tron (TRX).

It is now possible to buy Tether (USDT) using a wide range of exchanges. Binance is one of them. We couldn’t leave this “What is Tether (USDT)?” guide without this valuable information.

The reason behind the above-mentioned expansion is related to the way in which traders use it. Considering that exchanges tried to avoid handling fiat currencies, they added support to stablecoins. This is why many trading pairs such as BTC/USDT, ETH/USDT or LTC/USDT have larger volumes than BTC/USD, ETH/USD or LTC/USD.

Furthermore, receiving and sending USDT is easier and faster than USD. For example, if you want to withdraw funds from an exchange to your bank account in fiat currencies, the transfer might take several days to arrive. If you withdraw USDT, the transfer might take just a few minutes.

Moreover, you can use USDT as any other virtual currency in the market. Indeed, as the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) space expanded, stablecoins offered many opportunities to holders. It is now possible to earn rewards by lending them to other users.

For example, you can deposit 10,000 USDT coins in a DeFi platform such as AAVE and start earning interest on your funds. In this case, the deposit APY (Annual Percentage Yield) for USDT is 3.60% per year. Which is much more than what private banks are offering all over the world.

Although USDT is the largest stablecoin in the world, there are others such as USD Coin (USDC), True USD (TUSD), or DAI, among others. Each of them will work in a different way and offer different solutions to users.

Tether is basically used for trading. However, this is not the only use case for USDT. As we mentioned before, Tether can be also used in DeFi platforms, to send and receive transactions and also to reduce your exposure to volatile cryptocurrencies.

Tether has different use cases, as we have seen in the previous section. These use cases include the following:

There are many other use cases for Tether. The USDT coin has been expanding all over the world and it can be used on a wide range of platforms. Developers continue to create new solutions and services for USDT users.

You would find a large list of things you can do with Tether. In this “What is Tether (USDT)” guide we shared some of them.

Although Tether is now working as a stablecoin for the crypto market, the company behind Tether wants to expand its reach. The goal is to find a larger number of clients from corporations to shops or for commerce. For example, it might be possible for some salaries to be paid in USDT. Moreover, some companies might prefer to use USDT in order to make instant transactions.

To fully understand What is Tether (USDT), we need to clearly know how Tether does to stay on $1. The fast answer is that Tether is backed by real funds and dollars to back the supply available in the market.

Tether is backed on a 1-to-1 basis with actual and real assets. These assets include U.S. dollars, euros and more. These funds are held in the Tether platform’s reserve account. Thus, how does Tether Stay on $1? Each USDT is backed by real assets and real-world currency. This provides protection to users from the volatility of cryptocurrencies.

This is what the company claims. Nevertheless, there have been many controversies around Tether. We will talk about these controversies in the coming section related to Tether controversies.

Tether reserves are currently stored on Deltec Bank. The company is using this entity in order to receive and send payments in USD. Most of Tether clients, are using Deltec Bank in order to exchange their funds for USDT.

Deltec is a banking institution located in the Bahamas and that has invested in Bitcoin. This bank allows clients to move funds even during weekends. In this way, USDTs can be created even during the weekends.

The company claims that all the USDT coins in the market are fully backed. During a recent interview, Stuart Hoegner, the CTO & General Counsel of iFinex, the company behind Tether, explained that each USDT is fully backed by the company’s reserves.

These reserves include traditional currencies, cash, other assets and even loans. Tether has always been able to provide clients with USD. Moreover, the firm claims they have always honoured their redemptions.

However, it is difficult to know what can happen with Tether in the future. Regulations could eventually harm the company and USDT could disappear. That’s certainly a possibility. This is why it is always important to have a clear diversification strategy. Several stablecoins are currently available in the market.

There have been many controversies harming Tether’s reputation in the market. Due to this reason, several investors do not trust the digital currency. To have a complete “What is Tether (USDT)?” guide, we decided to share with you some of these controversies.

The paper summary reads as follows:

“Using algorithms to analyze blockchain data, we find that purchases with Tether are timed following market downturns and result in sizable increases in Bitcoin prices. The flow is attributable to one entity, clusters below round prices, induces asymmetric autocorrelations in Bitcoin, and suggests insufficient Tether reserves before month-ends. Rather than demand from cash investors, these patterns are most consistent with the supply-based hypothesis of unbacked digital money inflating cryptocurrency prices.”

However, some analysts have answered back to these claims. For example, Alex Kruger, trader and economists, wrote that Bitcoin purchases with USDT during price downturns could be related to participants trying to “buy the dip” or just doing arbitrage across exchanges.

Tether has also been accused of giving a loan of $850 million to Bitfinex in order to cover-up losses. Due to this reason, the New York Attorney General (NYAG) has been investigating the company.

The firm behind this stablecoin has been always ready to cooperate with regulators. For example, in a letter filed with the New York Supreme Court, the NYAG explained that Tether and Bitfinex have been very cooperative to solve this issue. Furthermore, additional documents were going to be handed to local regulators.

household name in the fast-changing crypto market.

The latest development is that Tether treasury minted a whopping 400 million USDT, as seen on Whale Alert, an advanced blockchain tracker and analytic firm.

READ: Cassava Fintech new COO projects an 80% online usage for its company´s payment platform

Tx: https://t.co/ZZ2Hyi3box

— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) January 7, 2021

READ: No retreat, no surrender, XRP jumps by 21%

What you should know

At the time of writing this report, the stablecoin traded at $1.00 USD with a daily trading volume of $133.4 billion. Tether is down 0.16% for the day. It is presently the third most valuable crypto with a market value of $23.5 billion.

READ: Ethereum investors have gained 51% in 2021 alone

Olumide Adesina is a France-born Nigerian. He is a Certified Investment Trader, with more than 15 years of working expertise in Investment trading. Follow Olumide on Twitter @tokunboadesina or email [email protected] He is a Member of the Chartered Financial Analyst Society.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has provided conditional approval to Anchorage Digital Bank.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has provided conditional approval to Anchorage Digital Bank National Association, the first federally chartered digital asset bank in history.

This development was revealed by the federally chartered crypto bank via its Twitter handle.

It tweeted, “Crypto deserves a bank, and we are immensely proud of being approved as the one to set the standard.”

Read the full announcement 👇👇https://t.co/0bvQHtCbCj

— Anchorage (@Anchorage) January 13, 2021

Having such a license places Anchorage Digital Bank firmly on the same regulatory footing as other American national banks in the country.

That said, the Crypto bank will be apple to offer unique services such as sub-custody services within reach for any traditional financial bank that wishes to offer customers access to Crypto assets.

Such a banking charter is the first seen in modern history, as the new Crypto bank continued that saying the banking charter will hinge upon unique requirements:

“As an enforceable condition of approval, the company entered into an operating agreement which sets forth, among other things, capital and liquidity requirements and the OCC’s risk management expectations.”

Ripple announced via a Job listing site it was looking to hire three central bank technical partner managers.

Ripple, a leading crypto fintech company, is going forward to bring the XRP Ledger to central banks.

Recently, Ripple announced via a job listing site that it was looking to hire three central bank technical partner managers – one for each of its offices in London, San Francisco, and New York.

Whoever fills those highly ranked positions will be mandated to design and deploy central bank digital currency (CBDC) projects.

READ: This is how Cryptocurrency works

Ripple also acknowledged that leading US banks could issue stablecoins on the XRP Ledger:

READ: Ripple’s XRP on a grand slam win, gains 20%

Recall that a powerful financial regulator, through the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC),  clarified details on American national banks’ and federal savings associations’ authority in taking part in using stablecoins to conduct payment activities and other bank-permissible functions.

What you should know: Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies created to minimize the price swings that occur in a crypto asset. They are usually pegged to fiat currencies and often exchange-traded commodities.

READ: Crypto owners robbed of 1,150,000 XRP

Stablecoins give owners a sense of security as users can store their assets whenever there is high volatility in the crypto-verse or other financial markets.

In terms of Bitcoin’s level of interest, Nigeria has been adjudged the highest performing nation worldwide.

Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy and home to over 200 million people, has the highest interest in Bitcoin globally.

According to a recent report released by Google, Nigeria emerged the first amongst other countries around the world in Bitcoin searches on Google.

READ: Africa’s internet economy has the potential to reach 5.2% of the continent’s GDP by 2025 – Goggle/IFC

READ: Computers might steal Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin fortune

READ: List of Cryptos outperforming Bitcoin, with weekly gains of over 100%

READ: Ethereum Miners earn a staggering $1 million in 1 hour

Unsurprisingly, a significant number of young Nigerians have started utilizing cryptos, in a bid to avoid the numerous challenges faced with the traditional money transfer services, such as high costs and slow speed, amongst others.

In an explanatory note to Nairametrics, Ekene Ojieh,  Head of Public Relations and Corporate Strategy at Buffalo Chase – a crypto analytic firm, gave key insights on how some Nigerians use cryptocurrency for wealth preservation.

READ: World Bank set to invest over $5 billion in drylands across 11 African countries

“Nigerians use bitcoin not just as a store of value but also as an investment. Its accessibility enables anyone to send and receive bitcoin from any part of the world, unlike getting US dollars for international transactions.

“It is worthy to note that bitcoin is still a volatile asset. The upside of this is that one can make a significant amount of profit in a short time frame,” said Ojieh.

READ: Why intelligent investors are secretly buying Bitcoin

Then, it becomes unsurprising to see leading crypto brands like Binance, FTX, Paxful, Crypto.com, printing their labels in Nigeria, as it is apparently one of the fastest-growing crypto markets in the ever-changing world.

holding Bitcoin for.

Deltec is based in the Bahamas and holds positions for Tether, a stablecoin issuer. The bank said that it has a “large position” in Bitcoin but did not reveal details. Hugo Rogers, the chief investment officer of the firm said in a 2020 review video,

“It also includes a large position in bitcoin, which has received a lot of attention recently. We bought bitcoin for our clients at about $9,300, so that worked very well through 2020. And we expect it to work well in 2021 as the liquidity crisis continues to run hot.”

Tether is the most popular client of the offshore bank. The stablecoin issuer is responsible for USDT, the largest USD-backed stablecoin in the world with a total circulating supply of 24.3 billion coins. Each Tether coin is equivalent to 1 USD in value.

The stablecoin issuer suggests that each USDT coin is backed fully by the firm’s dollar reserves. This means that Tether’s assets in the bank should be worth at least $24.3 billion. The firm suggests on its website that its reserves include traditional currency and cash equivalents. It also includes other assets as well as receivables related to loans given to third parties.

If Deltec is holding Bitcoin for the stablecoin firm, then a crash in the price of the coin may also lead to a crash in Tether’s backup reserves which could be a scary situation. According to the last published transparency updates of Tether (published on June 1, 2018), the firm had $2.54 billion in USD distributed across two of its bank accounts. This amount was more than the reported market cap of the firm at the time.

as a digital dollar to facilitate transactions between cryptocurrencies. The coin was created by Reeve Collins, Craig Sellars, and the 2020 US presidential election candidate Brock Pierce, who called it a successful experiment of putting fiat currency on a blockchain.

Tether claims that it issues new coins in response to need, but critics argue that the token is used in an elaborate scam to buy and ramp up the price of Bitcoin.

In a 2018 study, researchers from the University of Texas concluded that Tether appears to have been used to stabilize and manipulate the price of Bitcoin, but Bitfinex executives deny the claims. 

In a new interview with What Bitcoin Did host Peter McCormack, Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino and general counsel Stuart Hoegner again pushed back on the allegations.

They acknowledged that the flagship cryptocurrency is among the reserve assets that Bitfinex uses to back USDT. Still, they dismissed the idea that Tether is issued only to buy Bitcoin. Ardoino reasoned that Bitfinex can use the fiat money it has to buy BTC.

Hoegner also claims that the stablecoin is fully backed by assets that include cash, cash equivalents, and BTC amid reports that only 74 percent of USDT is backed. Ardoino and Hoegner refused to reveal the exact makeup of Bitfinex’s reserve assets, though. 

As to why Bitfinex is not hiring outside auditors to conduct a full audit, Hoegner justified this with consulting reports from an accounting firm and a law firm, and a report from Btifinex bankers.

Listen to the full interview below:

what does this move mean. Some argued it was a huge sign that US regulators are set to ramp up oversight of the cryptocurrency space as Bitcoin surges to uncharted highs.The Securities and Exchange Commission has largely cracked down on ICOs and similar crowdfunded token sales, but as XRP is classified by the SEC as a security, then the question is: which crypto asset could face the same fire?While a number of cryptocurrencies and similar assets are under speculation, Bitfinex Tether CTO, Paolo Ardoino has stepped in to assuage concerns and said there is no evidence the SEC is coming after them, too.Ardoino clarified via Twitter that Tether is indeed regulated and was registered with FinCEN. While pointing out that Tether recently hit $21 billion in market capitalization, he bashes those who echo the deliberate lies, accusing them of spreading FUD.As competitors of the popular stablecoin began to use the regulation card to gain favor with users, Tether handle confirmed the USDT token is backed by reserves equal to 100 percent of the outstanding coins.Suggested articles5 Popular Debit Cards That Let You Spend CryptoGo to article >>While the token issuers want to seem unconcerned about a possible lawsuit that could rock the company at its foundation, Tether’s legal woes have been already piling up.Bitfinex and its associated token are accused by US regulators of using $700 million from the stablecoin reserves to cover up losses of $850 million. The crypto exchange defended itself, saying the money was deposited with a Panamanian-company called Crypto Capital but then was seized and safeguarded in several jurisdictions, including Poland, Portugal, the UK and the United States, and all through this, it was no fault of Bitfinex.In its latest episode, the major crypto exchange lost a legal battle to appeal the court decision that effectively killed its attempt to refrain from handing over documents to the New York Attorney General on the grounds of jurisdictional overreach.While XRP’s fate is undecided yet, a similar legal action against Tether would be a major blow to other major stabecoins including Circle’s coin, Paxos Standard and the Gemini Dollar. Share this articleTelegramFinance Magnates Telegram ChannelTags: Bitfinex / Tether / XRPGot a news tip? Let Us KnowFound a mistake? Let us know Leave a Reply  Subscribe  Notify ofnew follow-up commentsnew replies to my comments All FM News IG Group Releases Brexit Update for EEA Clients/ 1 hour agoFX Futures Volume on Warsaw Stock Exchange Dominated in December/ 1 hour agoAnthony Scaramucci Warns about Bitcoin Bubble/ 3 hours agoChilean Court Orders Banks to Serve Crypto Exchange Buda/ 3 hours ago Related ArticlesBitcoin Soars past $34k as Record-Breaking Rally ContinuesGrayscale Crypto Fund Proactively Offloads Stellar XLM Alongside XRPIs DeFi the Next Step in an Expanding Crypto World, or Simply a Bubble? Directory CategoriesCryptocurrency Brokers 40 Social Trading 4 Wealth Management 45 Cryptocurrency Exchanges 21 Forex Brokers 476 Affiliate Programs 88 Regulation Consulting 33 Tools for Brokers 63 Platforms 156 Industry Websites 250 Regulators 52 KYC 5 White Label Solutions 48 Cryptocurrency Liquidity Providers 4 Translation Services 18 CRM 2 Liquidity Provider 40 Platform Providers 80 MT4/MT5 Bridge Providers 39 Payment Processors 73 Industry Executives 332 Keep in touch with usTelegramLatest PodcastsContent ChannelsRetail FXInstitutional FXExecutivesCryptoCurrencyFinTechAboutOverviewKeep in touch with usAdvertise with Finance MagnatesServicesDirectoryIntelligenceEventsAboutWebsiteTerms, Cookies and Privacy NoticeFinance Magnates is a global B2B provider of multi-asset trading news, research and eventswith special focus on electronic trading, banking, and investing.Copyright © 2021 "Finance Magnates Ltd." All rights reserved. For more information, read ourTerms, Cookies and Privacy Notice ×Report NewsWe do not store your information and we do not disclose our sources. Leave your name/email (not required) if you'd like to be contacted about this story (will not be disclosed):First NameLast NameEmailmessage*EmailThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. This iframe contains the logic required to handle Ajax powered Gravity Forms. ×Found a mistake?Be it a typo or a factual error - we do our best but we are also human! Do let us know and we'd be happy to check ourselves and fix if necessary. Thank you.First Name*Last Name*Email*message*PhoneThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. This iframe contains the logic required to handle Ajax powered Gravity Forms. wpDiscuz

Bitcoin’s stark price surge, 2020 has been a defining year. Stablecoins, in particular, saw major developments, both in terms of adoption and regulations.

Here are some important stablecoin developments in no particular order.

While this list goes on, let’s take a microscopic look at how stablecoins performed over the year, both individually, and in comparison to each other. The results are based on 7 stablecoins – USDT, USDC, BUSD, DAI, HUSD, PAX, & GUSD. Data collected will range from January 2019 to 12 December 2020.

One thing to consider here is that while Tether’s growth isn’t as much as BUSD’s, USDT had a market cap of $2.2 billion at the start of 2020 and it still grew to ~$12.4 billion. Usually, a stablecoin’s market share drops after it gets big, but Tether hasn’t slowed down.

Knowing the average and the median transfer value can help identify which stablecoins are used by whom. A lower mean and median value transfer indicate that the stablecoin is mainly used by retail. However, if this value is high, then it is used by institutions or high net worth individuals.

Among the 7 stablecoins, HUSD had the highest median and mean value transfer. The average median value transferred via HUSD was $174,000, while following it was BUSD at $17,151. The rest of the stablecoins had an average median value of under $1,000.

Following a similar trend, the mean value transferred was the highest for HUSD followed by BUSD, USDC, PAX, DAI, GUSD, & USDT. Perhaps, the exchanges getting into the mining & the OTC industry may be the reason why exchange-based stablecoins saw high median value transfer. From the looks of it, except HUSD and BUSD, other stablecoins were the most retail-popular coins.

Disclaimer: Institutions or high net worth individuals can break down their transactions into smaller units, hence, this result isn’t comprehensive and isn’t a conclusive test to determine if a stablecoin is retail-focused or institutional-focused.

This section is really important and gives an insight into how the market [crypto as a whole and stablecoin] has matured. Stablecoins and manipulation have been topics of contention for quite some time now. While this is mostly focused on Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin, this topic does deserve the center stage since stablecoins are the most popular way to onboard users into crypto. Hence, the logic behind the question of price manipulation by stablecoins does make sense.

But, is it true though?

Well, studies conducted earlier showed conflicting results. So, another way to confirm if this is true is to compare the percentage change market cap with the price surge of Bitcoin and find if there is a positive correlation. [Note: This method doesn’t specify if it is supply-driven or demand-driven, hence, not to be taken at face-value or investment advice]

This method can be split into two ways,

Individual stablecoins had a varying correlation with Bitcoin, with Paxos having the highest correlation among the bunch. Pax had a 0.28 correlation and USDC had the least correlation [-0.03].

The second method yielded a 0.009065 correlation and proves that there is no correlation between stablecoin issuance and the price of Bitcoin.

EOS, Waves, Dogecoin Price Analysis: 31 December

Cardano’s on-chain governance meant to restrict exchange participation

Akash is a full-time cryptocurrency writer and an analyst at AMBCrypto. He is an engineering graduate with an avid interest in finance and economics. Attracted to the chaos of trading, Akash has invested in BTC, ETH and XRP for educational purposes.

What are the implications of OCC’s letter for USDC, XRP?

After Ripple is SEC set to target Tether?

What’s driving the current Bitcoin bull run?

What the drop in Tether’s supply means for Bitcoin’s price

Will Coinbase-backed USDC push Bitcoin’s price higher?

Circle CEO: USDC circulation has exceeded 3.3 billion

exchange-traded product (ETP) from ETC Group (recently launched on Switzerland’s SIX stock exchange, though it trades elsewhere) has seen volumes far above all the other 1,800 ETPs listed on Deutsche Börse, the exchange said. Meanwhile, Bitwise found the number of financial advisers allocating crypto to client portfolios rose 49% year over year, according to a survey of 900 money managers.

Coinbase crowdsources coins The popular exchange announced the Asset Hub yesterday, a new issuance portal that would allow users to nominate a cryptocurrency to trade on the exchange. “We appreciate that the growth of the cryptoeconomy depends on the success of digital asset issuers, and we are committed to supporting issuers every way we can,” an executive said.

DOT matrix? As prices for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies continue to surge this year, many traders are looking for any indicator for when – or if – the bull market will come to an end. Some are convinced they have the answer: They are examining polkadot (DOT), the native token of the Polkadot blockchain, as a potential canary in the coal mine for cryptocurrency. CoinDesk’s Muyao Shen covers the market maneuver.

Tethered It’s been a while since we last covered Tether here, but a recent headline related to the bank where the stablecoin issuer parks its funds is as good a reason as any to check in. In a year-end video recording sent to its customers, and recently surfaced in the crypto media, Deltec Bank & Trust Chief Investment Officer Hugo Rogers said it was investing some client funds in bitcoin.

According to the video (which I haven’t personally seen), Rogers said the bank bought bitcoin before its latest run-up, at about $9,300. “[S]o that worked very well through 2020 and we expect it to continue working well in 2021 as the printing presses continue to run hot,” Rogers said in the video. The money machines go brrr.

Apart from the revelation that an investment officer at a Bahamian bank is a bitcoin bull, the quote did raise questions about Tether’s reserves. Tether (USDT) is a U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin. It’s issuer, Tether, a company that shares executives with the Bitfinex crypto exchange, is said to maintain the stablecoin’s one-to-one relationship with the greenback based on cash or cash equivalents held by Deltec.

Deltec has clarified that Roger’s statements “had no relation whatsoever to Tether’s depositary assets with Deltec.” So Tether’s reserves are definitely not backed by bitcoin. Or at least not bitcoin that investment officers at Deltec had begun purchasing in Q4 2020.

So what is backing tether?

There are now more than $24 billion in tether in existence, approximately a fivefold increase from the beginning of 2020, when there were fewer than 5 billion tethers. In theory, there should be approximately $24 billion in tether reserves parked in the Bahamian bank.

In short, no one outside of Tether can be entirely sure what’s backing the popular stablecoin. Tether isn’t decentralized like other cryptocurrencies, nor does it have a hard cap to the amount that can be created. 

Now the third-largest crypto by market cap, tether is likely the most trafficked crypto in terms of trade volume. It’s used not only as a legitimate means of payment (CoinDesk reported it’s frequently used to skirt sanctions in China and Russia), but also as a common trading pair and a place for investors to park their money during periods of market volatility.

“Tether’s growth in 2020 has been spectacular. We are now starting to speak of the Tetherization of trading, with the lion’s share of spot trading volume now denominated in tether (USDT) tokens,” Chief Technology Officer at Bitfinex and Tether Paolo Ardoino told CoinDesk over email through a spokesperson in December. “As commercial activity rises, so does the use of tether,” he continued.

As Ardoino suggests, the amount of tether is based purely on demand for the preeminent stablecoin. The company mints tethers based on orders from exchanges, traders and others, though because of its limited know-your-customer rules it’s not always obvious who is calling to turn on the mint.

Some of these questions might soon be answered. As part of an ongoing lawsuit pursued by the New York Attorney General, Bitfinex and Tether face a Jan. 15 deadline to provide millions of pages of documents related to a loan Tether allegedly provided to Bitfinex to cover an $850 million hole.

backed by assets that include cash, cash equivalents as well as bitcoin. However, both Hoegner and the company’s CTO Paolo Ardoino, are pushing back against the narrative that Bitfinex is engaged in a conspiracy to pump the price of bitcoin.

In an interview with Peter McCormack, the Bitfinex general counsel claims the misconception that USDT is not fully backed stem from a sworn affidavit which he says has been taken out of context. The contents of the affidavit, which Hoegner submitted on April 30, 2020, as part of the “New York litigation with Attorney General”, became public knowledge when the USDT’s market capitalization was only $2.1 billion.

According to that affidavit, about 74% of tether backing was in the form of “cash and cash equivalents on hand.” On the other hand, the remaining 26% was in the form of a $550 million loan to the company which it “is fully servicing.” The general counsel explains that since the stablecoin’s total market capitalization has gone up from $2.1 billion to the current $22 billion, the loan’s share of the USDT reserves shrunk to 2.5%.

In the meantime, both Hoegner and Ardoino have confirmed that bitcoins are part of the reserves assets that Bitfinex uses to back the stablecoin. Nevertheless, both men still refuse to divulge the exact makeup of assets in reserves. However, Ardoino does reveal the only time Bitfinex acquired the bitcoins which now form part of tether’s reserves: The CTO says:

The bitcoins in reserves are a good amount remaining from the past acquisition that we likely did in 2015/16….The bitcoins, which we bought for a good price in 2015/16, will probably be enough for perpetuity.

The CTO also dismisses the idea that Bitfinex is actually issuing tethers just to buy bitcoins. He says this narrative does not make sense especially when the company can simply buy the BTC using the fiat money which it has.

Meanwhile, when asked why the company is not hiring outside auditors to conduct a full audit, an evasive Hoegner says some steps have been taken in this direction as a show of “good faith.” Such steps include consulting reports produced by one accounting firm, and a law firm as well as a report from Bitfinex bankers. Nevertheless, the general counsel reveals Bitfinex is continuously “looking for ways to share information with the community, to be more open and to be transparent.”

With respect to the court injunction, which has since been “substantially narrowed”, Hoegner confirms that this is set to expire on January 15. However, even after the injunction’s expiration, the two companies and the AG will continue engaging in “constructive talks.”

Hoegner then closes by clarifying that the AG has not filed a lawsuit against Bitfinex and Tether and that the action against the two entities does not amount to a “criminal investigation.”

Do you agree that Bitfinex is not issuing tethers to pump the price of BTC? Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

Use Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash to play online casino games here.

archive]

(Remember 2017, when 600 million tethers was the total supply, and that was considered a shocking amount?)

Popular Tether derivative Bitcoin has gone up too, breaking 41,000 USDT yesterday — though it crashed down to 36,675 USDT earlier today. I was hoping for 50,000 USDT by the end of this weekend — speaking as the famous Bitcoin perma-bull that I am.

Frauds tend to keep growing until they can’t — and Tether is at the spiraling out of control stage.

The deadline for iFinex to provide the New York Attorney General with information in discovery on Tether is Friday 15 January. This doesn’t mean that a bell will ring at 00:01 15 January, and all the tethers turn into pumpkins — but that’s when the next act of this interminable saga starts.

(iFinex’s strategy appears to be to submit a massive unsearchable document dump. [Twitter] This might work, if the NYAG had done no work at all since 2018 on the issue, and hadn’t already formed a fairly well worked out opinion of iFinex’s behaviour.)

In screaming about the evil of The Federal Bank and its Fake Money for so long, the bitcoin people organically created the precise scam they think the government pulls.

— Helene J. (@_scaryh) January 10, 2021

More likely to cause issues is the forthcoming FinCEN regulation about documentation required to move crypto into and out of money services businesses — if you want to transfer more than $3,000 of Convertible Virtual Currencies on or off an exchange, they must collect your name and address. [Treasury; Federal Register, PDF]

This is the same rule that presently exists for cash — it’s fundamentally a further clarification following FinCEN’s May 2019 clarification of how existing law applies to cryptos.

FinCEN has put this rule through on a “substantial national security concerns ” basis, stating that the comments period is only token — this rule is absolutely going through. The US government is deadly serious about the sanctions regime — see chapters 10 and 13 of Libra Shrugged — and the Department of Justice has already prosecuted over cryptos being used by North Korea for money laundering. Per the rule, “U.S. authorities have found that malign actors are increasingly using CVC to facilitate international terrorist financing, weapons proliferation, sanctions evasion, and transnational money laundering.”

The crypto industry is absolutely crapping itself about this new rule, as if it’s the end of the world. Coinbase and Andreesen Horowitz plan to fight it in court. [CoinDesk; The Block]

For some of them, it will be the end — because even the cleaner players know they’re no more than one or two steps removed from dirty money, and this will affect the flows of all sorts of questionable cash.

Given the absolute panic going through crypto, I think this is rule is a likely explanation for the Tether printer going nuts right now.

Further new year gifts from FinCEN — foreign crypto holdings now require reporting in the same manner as foreign bank accounts. [FinCEN, PDF]

If you don’t report your foreign holdings, then the IRS can find you $12,921 for each non-willful violation; for wilful violations it’s $129,210, or 50% of the account balance, whichever is greater. [IRS]

— Palley (@stephendpalley) November 20, 2019

God help me, people keep messaging me — of all people — and asking for advice on how to get into trading crypto.

First: don’t. You will lose your money. It’s a completely fake bubble right now — and you’ll be left holding a bag of unsaleable coins, and waiting for the next bubble.

You’re going to do it anyway, of course — you’ve made your decision, you just want to tell yourself that you did your due diligence.

So. You can totally make money in crypto! I would never say you can’t.

But you’re much more likely to lose your shirt.

The crypto market is highly manipulated, and all but unregulated. It’s a pool full of sharks, and you look tasty.

Treat it as gambling, not investment. You know how you can gamble and lose all of your money in an instant? This is like that.

What about the market cap? Well, if you take the price of a beanie baby and multiply it by the number of those beanies, and add this up for all the beanies, you have the “market cap” of beanie babies, here in the year 2000!

This is a very real and informative number that tells you anything you can use to make your fortune in beanies. Or maybe it isn’t.

If you read any press article going “gosh, isn’t Bitcoin’s price high! Here’s some speculation as to why, from people with an interest in selling you on bitcoins” and it doesn’t mention tethers, you can disregard it.

If you have coins you’ve been stuck with since 2018 — sell your cost basis, the money you originally paid for them. Then every gain from there is for free.

Finally: don’t do it. You will lose your money. You are lining yourself up for a role as one of the suckers. Read Part 3 again.

— warrior cop (@wyatt_privilege) January 10, 2021

As always, I recommend Patrick McKenzie’s 2019 piece as the definitive text on Tether: “Tether is the internal accounting system for the largest fraud since Madoff.” [Kalzumeus]

Kristian Johansson — a Bitcoin holder and advocate — wonders about the bizarre lack of mainstream media coverage of Tether’s role in the price of Bitcoin. “If it is true that more large institutions are buying Bitcoin now, then surely they would have done a detailed risk analysis and Tether would have popped up as a very real risk and something that would be discussed more openly?” [Seeking Alpha]

(People keep suggesting Grayscale’s Bitcoin fund as evidence of massive quantities of institutional actual dollars going into Bitcoin. Grayscale’s GBTC fund states assets under management in dollars — but it accepts direct BTC deposits. An unknown proportion is just Grayscale acting as a custodian for their fellow whales — reputedly almost all of it, because they don’t break out this number. It’s not real-money institutions giving Grayscale actual dollars to buy bitcoins, not at all.)

Why does Tether issue on weekends and holidays, with Bitcoin pumps on weekends and holidays? It coincidentally matches with when CME Bitcoin futures settle — “bitcoin faced selling pressure in the days ahead of the expiry, as well as on the day itself. The event was also followed by selling over the weekend, leading to a gap down on the CME chart, which doesn’t include weekend data.” [CryptoNews, 2020]

Is Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme? I’ve long held that Bitcoin technically isn’t a Ponzi — it just works like one. Tr0lly details how Bitcoin is like a Ponzi, and why it’s important that it isn’t one legally in the US — it’s a much more complicated scheme. [Tr0lly]

Jorge Stolfi, however, describes why he thinks Bitcoin is a Ponzi — with answers to common objections. [Jorge Stolfi]

If you call Bitcoin a Ponzi, bitcoiners will dive in claiming that normal investments, the government, etc. are also Ponzi schemes. Claiming everything else is a Ponzi scheme really, if you think about it, is a standard excuse from Ponzi schemers — e.g., Bernie Madoff saying in 2011 that “The whole government is a Ponzi scheme.” [New York]

Why you can’t cash out pt 2 still applies — UK banks still really, really don’t like crypto. Good luck turning your paper gains into actual money. [The Times]

Telegraph: Bitcoin’s wild ride to $34,000 fuels fresh warnings of an impending crackdown — with a quote from me. [Daily Telegraph]

Cas Piancey: a new Tether primer. [Medium]

Kiffmeister’s Daily Digest by IMF researcher John Kiff, on the Tether Question. [blog post]

This is absolutely the worst way to present a good blog post, even worse than posting an essay as an extended Twitter thread. Everyone, go suffer through squinting at the text in a graphic. [Twitter; Twitter]

The following pair of tweets are real: [Twitter, archive]

The media, and bitcoiners, have gone wild with a JPMorgan analyst’s note that projects a Bitcoin price of $146,000! This means JPMorgan is going all in with crypto!!

Here’s the relevant paragraph from that analyst. It’s not the fount of optimism that enthusiastic (lying) bitcoiners have been painting it as. In fact, the number is a wild hypothetical as part of a quite negative outlook: [LinkedIn]

Mechanically, the market cap of bitcoin, at $575bn currently, would have to rise by x4.6 from here, implying a theoretical bitcoin price of $146k, to match the total $2.7tr private sector investment in gold via ETFs or bars and coins. But this long-term upside, based on an equalization of the market cap of bitcoin to that of gold for investment purposes is conditional on the volatility of bitcoin converging to that of gold over the long term. The reason is that, for most institutional investors, the volatility of each class matters in terms of portfolio risk management and the higher the volatility of an asset class, the higher the risk capital consumed by this asset class. It is thus unrealistic to expect that the allocations to bitcoin by institutional investors will match those of gold without a convergence in volatilities. In fact, an argument can be made that, in terms of risk capital, bitcoin has largely equalized with gold already given that bitcoin and its biggest fund on average currently consume x4.3 more risk capital than gold and its biggest fund.

What do crypto advocates worry about from the forthcoming Biden administration? The threat of someone who’s finally interested in doing something about the crime against humanity that’s called Proof-of-Work cryptocurrency mining. [Twitter thread]

Frances Coppola looks closely at MicroStrategy’s numbers — and why Michael Saylor is turning the company into a Bitcoin hedge fund. “Do you have a poorly-performing company that you don’t know what to do with? Bitcoin fixes this!” [blog post]

Bitcoin in the enterprise: Funke Media Group is given massive incentives to Bitcoin adoption, and is looking at 6,000 licenses — I’m sorry, Funke Media Group has 6,000 PCs locked by ransomware. [DW]

— Peter Huminski (@Thoriumwealth) December 31, 2020

Ever since the SEC’s hammer came down on Ripple and XRP in December, everyone’s been back-pedaling at the speed of light away from the coin and the company — in the hope of not getting any on them.

Bitstamp stops XRP trading for US customers as of 8 January. Other countries are not affected. [Bitstamp]

Coinbase is delisting XRP as of 19 January. Why so late? Well, there’s a lot of big holders around Coinbase. [Coinbase blog] You can still hold coins there, for some reason. Coinbase apparently spoke to the SEC “multiple times” while working out what to do about XRP. [Twitter]

Ripple got venture capital funding, presumably in the hope of looking more like a “real” company. One of the investors, Tetragon, wants their money back — now. Their deal apparently involves Tetragon being able to cash out on Ripple going public, and they’re saying the SEC declaring XRP a security that was sold to retail counts as taking company stock public. Stephen Palley has a Twitter thread on what we know about the case. [Bloomberg; Twitter]

Ripple’s XRP validator network was always functionally centralised — and couldn’t even reach consensus if it split. The model was always handwaving to fake decentralisation, where “decentralisation” is a word meaning “I want to dodge legal responsibility.” [GitHub]

The pretrial conference in SEC v. Ripple will be in February 2021. [Conference order, PDF]

— Cas “The Wolf of No Street” Piancey (@CasPiancey) January 9, 2021

Bittrex brings good news for privacy coins! Monero, Dash, Zcash, and Grin are being delisted from from Bittrex Global. This will have been due to pressure from banks who are worried about following money-laundering rules. [Bittrex]

White House Market, the largest currently-existing darknet market, no longer accepts Bitcoin — just Monero. So much for Bitcoin’s use case. [Twitter]

I’m shocked, shocked to discover that the Bitcoin exchange with racially and sexually discriminatory employment practices underpays its black and female employees! The New York Times was sent a trove of data from 2018 and 2019 by a disgruntled Coinbase insider. [New York Times]

India considers imposing an 18% sales tax on cryptocurrency. Note that this does not require India to make crypto legal — evading sales tax on illegal goods is also a crime. [Times of India]

Here’s a nice rundown of SEC enforcement actions against ICOs. The only thing I’d question is that the SEC did contact all these companies quite early, and was trying to avoid having to take action — the eventual actions come after a year or two. Perhaps the SEC could go faster, or state how long they were trying to resolve things in the press releases. [The Dig]

Bitcoin is secured by math, which is why HK$3 million of bitcoins mathematically belong to a gang of robbers now. Their cryptographic proof must have been more robustly peer-reviewed. [SCMP]

— Ely Kreimendahl (@ElyKreimendahl) December 31, 2020

BeInCrypto: Why Blockchain Won’t ‘Revolutionize’ Healthcare and Education Anytime Soon — with a quote from me. [BeInCrypto]

Frances Coppola: Crypto’s Choice: Join the Financial System or Fight It — if you want real money, you have to follow the rules of real money. [CoinDesk]

Tim Swanson: Parasitic stablecoins — how, instead of hyperbitcoinisation, the crypto world has gone as fast as possible into pseudo-dollarisation. WIth an appendix by Tim and Martin Walker. This goes into extreme detail about the legal issues around stablecoins, and how being utterly reliant on the conventional finance system is going to work out for crypto. [Great Wall of Numbers; Great Wall of Numbers]

— Tether Ponzi – WillyBot 2.0. (@RealWillyBot) January 8, 2021

There’s nothing I like more than seeing people’s paperbacks. Please tweet yours, and mention me at @davidgerard!

— Håkan Geijer (@hakan_geijer) December 24, 2020

If you're interested in a more critical perspective of cryptocurrencies than what you get from crypto bros, check out @davidgerard and @ahcastor pic.twitter.com/7RGoD1Ea6t

— Er_ick_ (@EckTxt) December 28, 2020

— Jenny Q Ta 🐶🐕 (@JQT_CoinLinked) December 27, 2020

counterparts. They are pegged to state-backed fiat currencies and sometimes to commodities like gold or oil.

Tether (USDT) is a fiat-collateralized stable coin. It is said to be 100 percent backed by the US Dollar in a 1:1 ratio. It is quite popular amongst bitcoin and cryptocurrency traders/investors.

But, USDT’s path to popularity has been quite an adventurous one. So, let’s dive in and try to understand it in detail.

In the beginning, there was no Tether, but Realcoin, the brainchild of Bitcoin Foundation boss Brock Pierce, entrepreneur Reeve Collins, and software developer Steve Collins. The company set up shop in Hong Kong and the Isle of Man.

Realcoin rebranded to Tether in the very same year and became associated with cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex (also based in Hong Kong).

Bitfinex opened trading for USDT in January 2015 and since then the stablecoin has not looked back.

In 2017 Tether rose to prominence as the total USDT supply grew from $7 million to $320 million in just seven months.

USDT reported a 5X growth in circulation from $440 million to $2.3 billion in November 2017 to January 2018 window!

6 years after inception, Tether boasts of leading the cryptocurrency market wrt daily trading volumes. Also, the USDT supply figure has appreciated to the $10 billion mark.

Tether exists as a 1:1 currency peg for the US Dollar, Euro, and the Offshore Chinese Yuan. These fiat currency-backed stablecoins are essentially digital tokens that represent the value of their underlying assets.

They function just like their other cryptocurrency counterparts and move value on their respective blockchains.

Speaking of blockchains, Tether tokens operate on the Bitcoin (Omni and Liquid protocol), Ethereum, EOS, and Tron blockchains.

Tethers existing on these blockchains are like applications that leverage the open-source software of these decentralized networks for supply and issuance of tokenized real-world currencies.

All Tether stable coins are backed by reserves of the company. As per the official website:

The Tether Platform is fully reserved when the sum of all tethers in circulation is less than or equal to the value of our reserves.

Source: Tether FAQs, http://www.tether.to

Tether initially came up as a fiat-currency tokenization application idea on the Bitcoin network through the Omni protocol. But in recent times, Tether has found more success using Ethereum as it’s ‘transport protocol’.

One can now access smart contracts and decentralized applications on Ethereum using USDT.

Tether, most importantly USDT provides digital asset market participants with the best of both worlds – USD exposure and speed and security of cryptocurrencies.

Also, USDT makes BTC and crypto trading super convenient. And that’s why it is the most popular USD stable coin (yes, there are more) and the 4th most popular cryptocurrency in the world.

USDT can serve as the perfect medium of monetary exchange between individuals and institutions without the interference of banks and third-party financial organizations.

Recently, Tether announced the launch of Tether Gold (XAUT). Owning a XAUT stable coin translates to owning one ounce of physical gold, from the yellow metal stash located in a vault in Switzerland.

Currently, XAUT functions as a smart contract token on the Ethereum and Tron blockchains.

WazirX has garnered the reputation of popularizing Tether usage in India with the best USDT to INR conversion rates.

As an alternative to the usual INR deposit and withdrawal mechanism, we launched the world’s first USDT based P2P transaction portal to let crypto traders and investors sort out transactions swiftly and with convenience.

To buy USDT through WazirX, you need to register on the platform first, then finish a super quick KYC process and finally deposit funds for the purchase. Here’s how it goes:

Securing Your Account

For security purposes, we highly recommend enabling 2-factor authentication (2FA). You can do so by downloading the Google Authenticator app and connecting it to your account.

KYC Verification

The last stage in the account set up process is KYC verification. Select your country from the list:

Then verify your KYC and finish the process. After that, you are all set to buy USDT from WazirX!

Depositing INR

You can deposit INR funds from your bank account to your WazirX account via UPI/IMPS/NEFT/RTGS.

Just submit details like bank name, account number, IFSC code, etc of the bank account with which you wish to transact, and then you are good to go.

In case the INR deposit is rejected, check out the WazirX support page for such issues.

Depositing Cryptocurrency

Depositing cryptocurrencies into your WazirX account, either from your wallet or another exchange is an effortless process. It’s also free – with no fees charged on any deposit!

Start by obtaining your deposit address from your WazirX wallet. Then, share this address on the ‘Send Address’ section of your other wallet for transferring your cryptocurrencies.

For more details, check out the WazirX Support page on depositing cryptocurrencies.

With all the necessary steps covered, you are now ready to buy USDT with your deposited funds. Here’s the process:

Log on to the WazirX app or website to view the latest USDT/INR prices.

On the app, press the USDT/INR price ticker. After that, scroll down a bit, and you will find the BUY/SELL  button amongst the ‘Charts’, ‘Orders’, ‘Trades’, and ‘My Orders’ options at the bottom.

Enter the INR amount with which you want to buy USDT. Note that this amount should be less than or equal to the INR funds deposited in your WazirX account.

Hit BUY, and wait for the order to execute.

Once the transaction is executed, you should find the USDT bought added to your WazirX wallet.

Also you can download the app and Start Trading Now!

Android App – WazirX – Buy Sell Bitcoin & Other Cryptocurrencies

iOS App – ‎WazirX

added $100 million in market capitalization every day since July 2020. Tether reserves on exchanges dropped in August 2020, however, there was a recovery above the 1.5 billion level in September 2020.

Based on data from Cryptoquant, the dependence of trading activity on Stablecoins is over 2 times higher than it was, at the beginning of 2020. Current stablecoin reserves are at 2.3 billion, against 1.5 billion in January 2020.

Corresponding to this, Bitcoin’s dominance has dropped and stablecoin market cap and dominance have increased. Thus largely influencing a high percentage of new buyers and retail traders on spot exchanges. If Tether faces charges, though retail investors’ holding in USDT won’t be affected, however, there may be a rush to sell before Bitcoin prices drop further. This may increase Tether market capitalization, and though the Treasury will keep up by minting more Tether and adding to the supply, Bitcoin’s dominance and price may drop below the 200-day average and the $10.5k level that it has sustained. 

Tether has provided stability to the crypto market during the downturns in Bitcoin’s cycle and this has had a large impact on the price. It is a cycle. However, to break out from this, traders’ dependence on Tether would have to reduce and other stablecoins would have to capture market share. However, that seems unlikely in the short run. In this case, it may possibly be game over for Tether if it finds itself in the crosshairs of the CFTC.

Chainlink, Cosmos, VeChain Price Analysis: 05 October

Bitcoin SV short-term Price Analysis: 5 October

Ekta is a full-time journalist at AMBCrypto and her specialization lies in spot markets. Currently pursuing her MBA, she is passionate about trading, fintech, and everything decentralized

Analyzing Bitcoin: You may have been using the wrong metric all along

Depending on this metric, Bitcoin may be due for a correction!

A key element about Bitcoin’s surge beyond $18K

Is Tether’s $18B market capitalization a threat to XRP?

$16K and zero hype – Where is Bitcoin going next?

How Tether is key to turning profits in Bitcoin’s volatile market

products of varying degrees of obscurity, and the great monetary awakening being experienced in the zeitgeist with varying degrees of epiphany and devotion.

Libertarian gold bug types got it right away, because their religion is based off of the same core tenets: a fixed supply of money that has to be earned before it is created is honest. It has the makings of a level playing field that resists the meddling of bankers, and that appeals to their sense of enterprise. Once out from under the oppressive thumb of the US Treasury, capitalism can finally function as intended and provide unlimited prosperity to anyone who dares to open an artisan trading or mining operation; pure Horacio Alger.

Cryptocurrency being a lot more accessible than gold, the movement has spread wider and earned a larger and longer spot in the mainstream here in its third wave than the precious metals sect could manage since the modern gold bug movement got going in 1971. NFL O-lineman Russell Okung, a notoriously fiery (and vague) tweeter, convinced the Carolina Panthers to pay half of his 2020 salary in Bitcoin and, in the process, got his base all fired up for the opportunity to throw a crackback block at the establishment.

Detractors point out that Bitcoin and its less famous peers make a great deal of money for the individuals who forged the original blocks, and are in a position to cash out at a multiple once the coin gains traction, to which coin types often reply: “Yeah? So?” As far as they’re concerned, anyone who gets in early deserves to get paid, and it’s still very early. This is not a religion that requires a vow of poverty.

So, since nature abhors a vacuum, the demand of the devoted is being served by an expanding universe of crypto products that people can either earn the old fashioned way by squeezing the most cpu cycles out of every available Kw/h of electricity, the new fashioned way by contributing to the proof-of-stake pool of some of the more modern constructs, or buy with the worthless, fiat dollars that their sucker landlord charges on rent day.

An entire galaxy of coins and tokens are traded on and off of an expanding list of exchanges, facilitating the matching of the supply with a reliably expanding demand. Coinmarketcap.com tells us that, in 2020, 33 different coins managed more than $20 million in average daily volume. Most of those coins saw considerable price growth over that period in dollar terms.

The coins that experienced no price growth – Tether and USDC – are on the left hand side of this chart, showing zero growth over the period in USD, because those coins are pegged to the US dollar, and are created when someone buys a new one from the coin’s “treasury” with a US dollar.

Accordingly, in an environment where dollars are flowing into bitcoin, those coins have experienced the largest growth in supply.

Journalist Amy Castor has done the legwork to bring us a timeline of hacks, banking problems and lawsuits in which the makers of Tether and Bitfinex, a closely affiliated exchange, have likely been less than transparent about Tether’s reserve base and its composition.

A reddit post from 2017, supposedly authored by a former Tether employee, alludes to the possibility that some of the tethers are functionally being created when purchased with other cryptocurrencies, which would be consistent with the reserves being invested in a rising bitcoin market, and the holders of the reserves pocketing the difference, a hustle which works just fine in a rising market, but is bound to fall apart when the tide goes out, and is by no definition the “stable reserve” Tether claims to be.

Tether had coiners laughing Mountain Dew through their noses when it was revealed in a sworn deposition that some of the USD that was supposed to be making up the reserves was in fact used to buy Bitcoin.

Tether’s stablecoin cousin, USDC, hasn’t run into any audit trouble yet. It’s backed by coinbase, and meant to be a gateway in to crypto product ownership. It’s growth is a reliable indicator of the general demand for cryptocurrency products as investments, because, presumably, most of the people buying it are doing so for the most righteous of reasons: to buy bitcoin.

As the public is increasingly coinpilled, and flees the oppressive chains of the financial establishment, that same establishment is dreaming up new and innovative ways of giving them what they want, and charging them for it. Pantera Capital wrote on their blog back in November that Paypal accounted for the largest purchases of newly minted bitcoins by volume, There is now a bitcoin debit card that runs on the VISA payments network. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the largest futures market in the world, is now offering BTC futures.

It remains to be seen if the establishment’s encroachment on the DeFi movement will ruin its appeal and sink the whole value of its stock in trade, or if it will work the other way around.

Tether isn’t a complicated scam. It isn’t even original. The first banks were establishments that had strongboxes and security sufficient to keep the gold deposits of third parties safe from being pilfered. They issued receipts for deposits, which began to be traded instead of the gold itself for convenience.

The banks quickly figured out that they could issue more receipts than there was gold, which is an obvious grift, but also a useful one that adds some handy liquidity to the economy. So, after a few fits and starts, the con was dressed up with certain rules of engagement and evolved into modern banking.

Expect that the scams to come will evolve with the cryptocurrencies that are their medium, and that the laws will evolve to catch up.

Braden Maccke is a writer from British Columbia, the lone member of The Deep Dive‘s West Coast Contingent.

Rogers.

According to the video uploaded to the bank’s Youtube channel, Deltec’s large position in bitcoin (BTC) has brought “a lot of attention recently.”

Rogers further explained the move:

We bought bitcoin for our clients at about $9,300, so that worked very well through 2020. And we expect it to work well in 2021 as the liquidity crisis continues to run hot.

Earlier this year, Rogers told Bloomberg about what represents a bitcoin position from a strategical point of view:

A small position in Bitcoin can go a long way. There’s a lack of an alternative in real assets that can show a comparable return. If you’re going to diversify your portfolio anyway, this is a good place to go.

To clarify the separation between Tether and the bank’s holdings, Stuart Hoegner, general counsel of the crypto trading platform Bitfinex and Tether, commented on the matter:

We are aware of recent statements by Deltec Bank & Trust Limited about the purchase of digital tokens for and on behalf of their customers. Tether does not outsource decisions about its reserves. Deltec does not purchase digital tokens for and on Tether’s behalf.

The recent crypto market’s bull-run has been fueled interest among private banks and investment advisors towards crypto.

German private bank Hauck & Aufhäuser announced that they would launch a crypto investment fund this year. Such a move will allow institutional and semi-institutional investors to invest in digital assets including, bitcoin, ether, and stellar.

Also, news.Bitcoin.com reported on a survey that revealed that the number of U.S. financial advisors allocating to crypto in their clients’ portfolios surged significantly in 2020.

What are your thoughts on Deltec’s bitcoin position disclosure? Let us know in the comments section below.