Even IF ( a big IF) your explanation is true, it is of little help to most of people holding USDT. So in the best case scenario to redeem USDT for USD: 1. Y

Even IF ( a big IF) your explanation is true, it is of little help to most of people holding USDT. So in the best case scenario to redeem USDT for USD: 1. You have to have a Taiwanese bank account. 2. You have to gain verified status at Bitfinex's discretion. 3. You have to have a balance over 50k USDT. Bitfinex/Tether backers know that it is near impossible to trigger a serious run on their USD balances with such rules. Thus it logically follows, they have very little incentive to actually keep 2.3B in USD EVEN if they received 2.3B in USD. I can buy the explanation that originally Tether planned to have 1:1 USD for each USDT. However the massive regular printing of Tether really strains the 1:1 claim.