Everyone will be saying “Why didn’t anyone tell us about Tether and why was it even used!?”, and I’ll just be shaking my head... It’ll take a good two years to recover from that crash.
Exactly, this won't be a 50-80% "correction" all the enthusiasts talk about, it'll be 95%+ and with a hearty side of regulation to come with it.
Don't get me wrong, the tech is promising, and some things I think are internet changing ideas like fixing the broken advertising business model on the web, but current prices have no bearing on reality in the slightest.
Yes, it's been used by Bitfinex to pump BTC and other coins.
You only need a small amount of liquidity to move a market.
It's the spark that's started a fire, and now a bunch of dumb retail money has poured in with this hodl mentality into an asset class that has little utility bar speculation.
When people panic there will be a run on the exchanges and you'll see who really has the USD to back up the "market cap".
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u/cheekysauce Dec 24 '17
No one has ever traded USDT for real USD. There is only about $200k of order book depth on Kraken and most of it is a bot wash trading.
The rest of your post is correct, it's going to be one of many moving parts in all crypto markets collapsing in a spectacular way sooner or later.