Tether Calls Hedge Funds Shorting USDT ‘categorically Wrong’

Hedge funds that chose to go short USDT after the crash of Terra “don’t understand how the cryptocurrency and Tether market works on a fundamental level.” The issuer of the “stablecoin stated this”.

Tether Limited responded to a WSJ podcast that discussed USDT collateral concerns and the rationale for shorting it.

For the first time, the publication reported on the popularity of such an idea in June. At that time, the company’s CTO Paolo Ardoino stated that the company had processed the conversion to fiat of 7 billion tokens (~10% of total assets). 

On June 18, the website of the stablecoin issuer was subjected to a large-scale DDoS attack . Then the CTO of the issuer ruled out the impact of the incident on the ability to redeem positions in USDT.

“Hedge funds’ view of the collapse of Terra as a constructive factor for shorting Tether represents an asymmetric knowledge gap between crypto market participants and traditional financial institutions,” the issuer’s representatives wrote.

Among other “unreliable reasons” for such actions, the company named:

• emission of USDT “out of thin air”;
• significant commercial paper investments by Chinese companies, including troubled real estate developer Evergrande ;
• “ provision of unsecured loans to third parties”;
• distrust of the thesis about 100% security of the issued “stable coins” and its high liquidity.