Have you sold your Tether (USDT) yet? Fair Warning!
As is widely reported at the moment and suspected to be a major cause for further correction in the cryptocurrency market, along with regulation and bank banning news, Tether might not be as reliable as you might think and at worst is comitting fraud.
Like many people trading Bitcoin and other altcoins, for many months I've been holding Tether on and off, using it as a stop loss against Tether pairs. It served me well in Q4, but most notably now it's not offering any discounts on BTC or other pairs. I'm all out.
In comparison to when it would often trade upto $1.05 when the altcoin market was coming down, but only usually down to $0.99 ot $.98 at worst when the market was going up. Now it's struggling to hold onto $1 as the market continues to correct.
This is the biggest concern right now as Bitcoin and the market tank, Tether is no longer trusted enough to prop it up, or offer any discount on buying back in. Why hold it?
The only upside is that a collapse of Tether would only "directly" be shaving off $1bn of Bitcoin's $100+b market cap - only 1% - given Tether's market cap of just over $2bn of which approximately 50% is paired with BTC.
The aftermath however such as with BitConnect could be more serious.
!!!
Minutes after I posted that, Tether drops to $0.944!
Not as low as last weeks dip to $0.925 but still 5% in the wrong direction...
I never even had 1 tether.