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Well, clearly Tether will take your $1 and issue you USDT. The problem is that for the most part, you cannot get that dollar back for it. 100 units of USDT is

by jki275 7y ago

Well, clearly Tether will take your $1 and issue you USDT. The problem is that for the most part, you cannot get that dollar back for it. 100 units of USDT is worth $100 only if you can get someone to trade it to for that. For the moment, you actually cannot -- you have to trade it through BTC or one of the other crypto coins that are actually paired with USD first.

lacker 7y ago
You do have to trade it on an exchange to get the value, I just mean that right now one USDT is trading for right around $1. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/
- jki275 7y ago
  You can't though. That's the problem. Nobody will actually exchange USDT for USD 1-1 unless something has changed very recently.
  - jwinterm 7y ago
    This market has been operational for a couple years now I think: https://trade.kraken.com/markets/kraken/usdt/usd https://trade.kraken.com/markets/kraken/usdt/usd That is a San Francisco based exchange with USD deposits and withdrawals. There's been a couple times where tether has been under a dollar during times of high uncertainty (and I think relatively low liquidity of this trading pair), but generally you can trade tether for USD and withdraw here.
    - jki275 7y ago
      Interesting to see that it exists -- I know there was a great deal of controversy over the fact that Tether would not redeem them ever. The order book there is awfully thin for an asset worth the billions USDT is supposed to be though.
  - lacker 7y ago
    If can exchange USDT for BTC at the same rate that you can exchange USD for BTC, that's good enough to make 1-1 the going rate for USDT <-> USD. Yeah, it's inconvenient to exchange USDT into dollars, but the ability to easily exchange into dollars isn't the primary utility of stablecoins.
    - jki275 7y ago
      Right -- it's the ability to avoid changing to USD, while pretending that you can if you want to.

by jki275 7y ago

lacker 7y ago

You do have to trade it on an exchange to get the value, I just mean that right now one USDT is trading for right around $1. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/

jki275 7y ago
You can't though. That's the problem. Nobody will actually exchange USDT for USD 1-1 unless something has changed very recently.
- jwinterm 7y ago
  This market has been operational for a couple years now I think: https://trade.kraken.com/markets/kraken/usdt/usd https://trade.kraken.com/markets/kraken/usdt/usd That is a San Francisco based exchange with USD deposits and withdrawals. There's been a couple times where tether has been under a dollar during times of high uncertainty (and I think relatively low liquidity of this trading pair), but generally you can trade tether for USD and withdraw here.
  - jki275 7y ago
    Interesting to see that it exists -- I know there was a great deal of controversy over the fact that Tether would not redeem them ever. The order book there is awfully thin for an asset worth the billions USDT is supposed to be though.
- lacker 7y ago
  If can exchange USDT for BTC at the same rate that you can exchange USD for BTC, that's good enough to make 1-1 the going rate for USDT <-> USD. Yeah, it's inconvenient to exchange USDT into dollars, but the ability to easily exchange into dollars isn't the primary utility of stablecoins.
  - jki275 7y ago
    Right -- it's the ability to avoid changing to USD, while pretending that you can if you want to.