Like a nagging back pain that disappears and then re-appears weeks or months later, Tether (USDT) is once again back in crypto news.

It had been just long enough to push the whole Tether controversy to the back of our collective minds when it was announced that $250 million worth of Tether had been issued today.

In the past, grants of Tether have created a temporary pump in the markets as more money is injected into the system, but many suspect it is entirely artificial and inflated money, creating a bubble situation that is bound to burst when Tether's supposedly US-backed funds turn out to not be as well backed as they claim to be.

Of course, there are other stable coins that have been trying to establish their own place on the market. Ironically, when the so-called stable coin TrueUSD was launched on Binance a few days ago, it rocketed up in value by about 30% (who was buying a stable coin at 30% above dollar value?!). That is not supposed to happen with a stable coin, for obvious reasons. So, the coin was removed from Binance temporarily, with plans to return to trading on May 22.

The most suspicious recent activity concerning Tether took place earlier this year when an auditor was dismissed during the auditing process in an attempt to determine whether Tether actually held the funds it claimed to hold. Of course, Tether's official line was that the dismissal had nothing to do with a lack of solvency. Months later, there is still no way of knowing whether Tether actually holds the millions of dollars in USD that it claims to have backing up its coin.

It is unfortunate that in a realm that is supposed to solve the problem of transparency with public ledgers, that uses cryptography to ensure integrity and prove there is no need for trust, and that is meant to decentralise powers that can destabilise and manipulate the value of currency, that the market is still reliant on centralised, potentially manipulative entities like Tether. Hopefully, stable coin alternatives can provide a better solution soon.

*This is not professional trading advice - it's just my opinion!

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source:
http://bitcoinist.com/250-million-tether-grant-here-we-go-again/

image source:
https://coincentral.com/what-is-tether/