Cryptocurrency is never far from controversy and now we have the latest news that stable coin Tether, which trades at around 1:1 with the U.S. dollar, has just printed a quarter of a billion USDT tokens. The news, reported in the Omni Explorer, garnered considerable discussion amongst cryptocurrency enthusiasts.
There has been considerable controversy going on around Tether ever since it broke ties with established audit firm Friedman LLP just before an official audit was supposed to be conducted. Tether continues to claim that itscoin USDT is backed at a 1:1 ratio to the U.S. dollar. However, there does not seem to be any proof to back up that score and the situation remains murky to say the least.
Tether has an almost complete monopoly on stable coins and now the total supply of this currency has reached a staggering 2.5 billion, which translates into $2.5 billion. Several critics find it hard to justify or believe the existence of such a massive supply of coins.
Some critics have pointed out to a correlation in the price increases of certain established cryptocurrencies such as BTC and Ethereum every time a fresh supply of Tether is printed. Anonymous blogger Bitfinex’ed has pointed out that there were increases in the prices of BTC and ETH by around $120 and $10 respectively within an hour of the issuing of the new Tether tokens. These price movements have given rise to accusations of manipulation which appears to be harming the cryptocurrency industry in the short to medium term.
Bitfinex, a sister company of Tether, is regularly placed amongst the largest cryptocurrency exchanges around. It is currently threatening to sue critics like Bitfinex’ed for raising doubts over the currency’s 1:1 ratio with the USD. However, this fact has still not been proved since no audit was carried out as yet.
Still, Tether does not look like being the only stable coin around for a while longer. It appears that there are new players who are about to enter the scene, including Circle, which is backed by Goldman Sachs. Other companies, such as TrueUSD and Basis, have also reportedly begun developing their own stable coins for the market.
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