How safe is USDT?

[jtipt]

USDT is by far the most sketchy stablecoin out there. USDT currently has $76B in circulation and they claim it is backed 1 to 1 to USD, this would mean Tether has $76B cash reserves but it has never released an official audit.

Now the interesting or rather scary part is that every time there is a parabolic move by BTC, USDT issuance also goes parabolic, do they really have that much USD to back tether? Most likely no. USDT mimics USD and fiat's worst property i.e issuance out of thin air.

If and when this likely fraudulent company goes under, the biggest liquidity provider for the crypto market will cease to exist and the effects will be catastrophic. If anything we need to stop using USDT and move towards more transparent and decentralized stablecoins like DAI or UST (terra USD) or even USDC as a centralized stablecoin is a much better alternative than tether.

[Snappycoco]

This is a question i had for a long time,ive seen majority of traders buy and trade crypto through USDT,they just blindly trust it ,as its purpose is that of a stable coin ,i.e. basically a crypto replacement for USD($).
But what if the company behind USDT decides to cheat its holders,is there any way we can find out before a complete disaster? (for e.g. they start minting more coins unnecessarily)
is there any safety mechanism or a red flag indicator before its too late?

There's none. They are minting actually coins almost weeks actually and there no question about it. If ever Tether USDT becomes a disaster, then almost all of crypto market will collapse but I guess global community have to do something about it. We need a stablecoin which is backed by assets except USD. Like a golden standard made by The Standard protocol. You can generate an algorithmic stable coin by locking up your BTC, ETH and other coins that is allowed by The Standard dao. This is the solution of this USDT drama.

[nimogsm]

do not use usdt as long-term savings, if you have a large amount, study what alternatives there are and store them in them so it will be safer.The entire deposit in an ad asset is always a risk, divide it into 2-3 parts.This issue has been repeatedly discussed here on the forum.

[marcous]

USDT has lots of problem with everything, rumours everywhere that they can't be trusted but yet they are leading the top stable coin chart in the world today, I still use usdt to be honest because if the project is that bad they should be down already, another one is xrp that many hated for no reason or their centralised part until they start showing real usability, we just have to wait and see what will happen

And I'm sure nothing bad will happen to USDT, so far the news about USDT has been circulating very widely but I see nothing bad for USDT as well as for XRP which continues to improve even though it has experienced very bad problems.

[Coin_trader]

This is a question i had for a long time,ive seen majority of traders buy and trade crypto through USDT,they just blindly trust it ,as its purpose is that of a stable coin ,i.e. basically a crypto replacement for USD($).
But what if the company behind USDT decides to cheat its holders,is there any way we can find out before a complete disaster? (for e.g. they start minting more coins unnecessarily)
is there any safety mechanism or a red flag indicator before its too late?

USDT is famous for printing money out of thin air. There's no way prove immediately all the red flags unless the law force them to submit a mandatory financial audit for every token they are printing. But they will not cheat blatantly considering how famous there token already and the amount of profit they are getting by just minting it. Imagine you are the owner of this stablecoin and you know that your product is the number one in the whole crypto market, Do you think you will destroy a long term profit in exchange to a quick bucks that full of risk from authority?

[Godwinpaul]

We've heard diverse opinions about the validity and reliability of USDT, but that doesn't change the fact that USDT is the best we've got. I understand that there may be some questionable trait as to whether USDT is backed with the dollar equivalent of the market capitalisation, but it's really not important to me. USDT has been serving its purpose in the cryptocurrency market for quite a while now and I don't see that ending soon.

[mdzahed134]

I think USDT is so much controversial in stable coin and large number of people don't trust this coin because of it’s past history (you know can be freeze at any moment) But it’s true that still this coin is most using in crypto trading. But long term holding might be risk, and big amount holders should pick others stable coin such as USDC is my favorite.

[Jose Mourinho]

USDT has lots of problem with everything, rumours everywhere that they can't be trusted but yet they are leading the top stable coin chart in the world today, I still use usdt to be honest because if the project is that bad they should be down already, another one is xrp that many hated for no reason or their centralised part until they start showing real usability, we just have to wait and see what will happen

I don't see usdt being in trouble at the moment, but what I do know is that usdt is always hit by bad news about PUD, so many crypto users doubt the potential of usdt, but if you research deeply then you will find out how big of a prospect the usdt has, evidence the most obvious thing is that until now usdt still survives and is the best stablecoin in crypto, I personally always use usdt as a medium of exchange and have never experienced any problems at all,

[Silberman]

USDT has lots of problem with everything, rumours everywhere that they can't be trusted but yet they are leading the top stable coin chart in the world today, I still use usdt to be honest because if the project is that bad they should be down already, another one is xrp that many hated for no reason or their centralised part until they start showing real usability, we just have to wait and see what will happen

If the community does not like a project you can be sure there is something wrong with it and eventually something could happen to it, and what better example than what happened to bitconnect, the community warned everyone that would listen that it was a scam but many people decide to ignore the warnings and think of them as unfounded, and then suddenly one day bitconnect crashed and it never recovered, USDT is not as bad as bitconnect was, but there are reasons to think it is not as good of a project as people think, and as such it is a good idea to stay away from it if you can.