Bitcoin Forum

Hey Folks,
I noticed the USDT market cap is increasing rapidly the last days/weeks, with big jumps:

http://coinmarketcap.com/assets/tether/historical-data/

sometimes increasing 20m a day.
What do you think about it? Its a good sign or not?

Looks to me that more and more big investors are entering cryptos, not leaving - or am I misinterpreting this?

The way I see is that everyone is currently switching to tether instead of USD for fast trading and the reason they are doing that is because of 1st august, some traders have some doubts about bitcoin being able to survive etc. so they buy tether, keep them on exchanges and buy bitcoin back after the storm fast, that's not possible to do with USD as bank transfers could take some days etc. The marketcap will continue to increase as long as they add more USD to their reserve since Its backed by US dollar 1:1

Thanks for sharing. It's to be expected of a tether that's used on an exchange that just can't stop growing, but that kind of numbers seems to say something a bit more. I've been considering diversifying into USDT as well, given that almost any alt I've put into my basket of cryptos typically goes up and down with BTC anyway. I've been observing a bit and my USDT would have been able to buy more in the dips than had I stuck to BTC buying as I have been.

USDT is safe heaven at present. With increasing chaos and confusion in Bitcoin market, people are mainly shifting to USDT for saving their money from dipping more. As Altcoin is also not showing any sign of recovery and price and volume is constantly decreasing along with the devaluation of Bitcoin. Investors got to shift somewhere, USDT (as Tether always maintains stable quotations) is the best alternative as later on they can trade and invest back faster as compared to fiat when everything comes back to normal.

I know that many people are shifting into USDT, but that doesnt increase the Market Cap of USDT. Some big players are bringing the USD there - in my opinion

Market Cap 29th June: 150m
Market Cap 20 days later: 310m

Market Capitalization = Price * Circulating Supply
price is fixed at $1, even with fluctuations that USDT has in the recent past the price still stays around $1 with little difference.

this means the increase in Market Capitalization is caused by an increase in their Circulating Supply.
in other words they produced about 160 million new Tether tokens in the past 20 days.

it has nothing to do with people shifting to that altcoin!

Yes it does.  They produce Tether tokens when they can be backed by a dollar that they hold, and they can do that when the tokens are bought on exchanges (well they can produce when they like, but they're supposed to be backed).
Equally dumb.  Yes it does.  Increasing volatility, fear of an upcoming bear market and confusion about the weeks ahead is pushing people into USDT for the next few weeks.
Big players almost never go into USDT.  USDT is not safe due to the price fluctuations, and a Tether "cryptocurrency" does not work.  They would convert back to fiat rather than be at the mercy of Tether.

When USDT becomes a "safe haven" in its current state, it really makes you think about the state of volatility right now, doesn't it?

It seems people start understanding the importance of having fixed value cryptocurrency and interestingly I do see another new project is coming up with some more exciting features along with fixed value : decentralized dollars (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2016043.0).

That is like a coin of refuge right now, in the face of uncertainty. The dreaded coming of August 1 is causing people, more and more each day, to look for some ways to protect their precious bitcoins. Some are jumping to alts without leaving a single satoshi behind. But since in the past several days, almost all the alts are also bleeding pure red, then they think that the alts are also going down the line as well. USDT becomes the option for many. I know of several friends who are also choosing USDT.

what if they are just creating USDT out of thin air without any backing. They say that it is backed by USD 1:1. But we dont know if its truly backed or not. Its not audited..

what if polo is a scam?

so which money backs the Tether? The Tether "company" holds the USD? But its not their own USD?

USDT has already lost its credibility in terms of maintaining a value that equals to a ratio of 1USDT = at all times 1USD. It has gone over and under the 1USD level a couple of times now. It's just another shitty method to scam people -- the worst thing is that exchanges knowingly allow this to happen by supporting this rubbish token to be further distributed. It was an initiative doomed to fail from the very first moment it came to life. If you want to be centralized even harder than what governments do with your fiat holdings, then go ahead and dive into Tether. Centralization on top of more centralization. :-X

last 2 weeks: USDT market cap +50%

everyone who is complaining about USDT cap did not understand the point of USDT.
USDT is NOT an altcoin nor similar to any altcoin.
It is just a centralized medium to transfer/store USD. So if more people want to use USDT, of course more USDT are created.