Tether Hack: USDT Dangerous?
Coindesk reports that nearly $31,000,000 USDT was stolen yesterday, by an unknown attacker(s). The funds come on the heals of a lot of recent negative attention toward Tether, and specifically Bitfinex, which is one of the exchange sites where Tether is available and utilized.
"$30,950,010 USDT was removed from the Tether Treasury wallet on Nov. 19, 2017 and sent to an unauthorized bitcoin address. As Tether is the issuer of the USDT managed asset, we will not redeem any of the stolen tokens, and we are in the process of attempting token recovery to prevent them from entering the broader ecosystem."
Following the hack a significant market dip occurred in many of the top 100 cryptos. Most notably Bitcoin dipped nearly 5.4% according to Bloomberg (link below).
Tether has been a hot button issue for weeks now, with many Youtube content creators speculating, perhaps justifiably, that Tether may be dangerous, because its real life counterpart USD, which it is supposed to be backed by, may or may not exist. And if the USD is not there to back the USDT then each Tether is no better than printed money, a fake, inflationary, untrustworthy investment.
There are concerns and conspiracy theories around Tether, without getting too wild, and I think the attached article raises some very serious and justifiable criticisms against investing in Tether. The article is an interesting read, the case is made that Tether at the very least is concerning because it introduces fractional reserving to the crypto space. He has a 7 point criticism of Tether which clearly outlines that argument, read the full article if you want that.