What if this is being hold as a controlled bomb against the inevitable bitcoin price rise?
It's difficult to say what will happen when USDT does finally implode. Obviously there is an awful lot of fake USDT being printed out of thin air, which has been used to pump the market at various times for the benefit of iFinex/Bitfinex/Tether. The Leibowitz v iFinex Inc. case spells it out pretty well:
https://www.classaction.org/media/leibowitz-et-al-v-ifinex-inc-et-al.pdf. So when USDT collapses, all that artificial pumping will disappear and a lot of people will lose a lot of money, which could obviously lead to bitcoin's price falling. However, prior to the complete collapse of USDT, there will be millions of users trying to offload 16 billion USDT in to other assets, the majority of which will be bitcoin. It will be a volatile time, that's for sure, but just like every other hack or scam it won't kill or irreversibly damage bitcoin. I think it would be better for it to happen sooner rather than later.
I disagree. I speculate that exchanges might be ordered immediately to stop accepting Tether deposits, withdrawals and trades by regulators.
Also, if everyone was given time to offload Tether to hold bitcoin before taken down, I reckon that everyone in the cryptospace might also be at risk because we hold cryptocoins without the liquidity that supports its markets.
In any case, what are the news updates on Bitmex? The website is still working. I speculate a settlement.
