> (relatively small) Tether market cap is currently $24 billion and growing exponentially. BTC market cap is $700bn but that price is set on the margin by redd

> (relatively small) Tether market cap is currently $24 billion and growing exponentially. BTC market cap is $700bn but that price is set on the margin by redditors buying $100 on a credit card, there is no depth to it. The Tether hypothesis is that ~all~ of the market cap of BTC is ultimately derived from thin marginal price on retail exchanges. You can't sell a billion of bitcoin for USD 1 billion, nobody has ever tried, there is not a buyer, and that's only .1% of the market cap. Any thin real cash in the ecosytem is exfiltrated by miners selling into retail to pay electricity bills. If Tether stops printing, retail stops buying, and there is no more cash for electric bills, network stops. This is both a game-over scenario for bitcoin as well as actually high likelyhood of happening due to action by US Government against Tether.