I still think that Bitfinex is operating as a central bank and primarily loaning out Tether against bitcoin (and eth) cold wallets.
Instead of $10B of tether being converted to USD and taken out of the crypto ecosystem, what I suspect has happened is that $10B of loans have been paid back in tether and the collateral has lost value so the borrower cannot re-borrow the tether. Bitfinex doesn't ever redeem tether for USD and that isn't how tether is burned.
This means that it is predominantly crypto backed, which will at some point collapse if crypto collapses, but it is much more intrinsically stable than Terra/Luna up until crypto fails.
Maybe I'm wrong and we're about to see Tether bolt for the exits and crash and take out all of crypto with it. But crypto has been through a worse crypto bear market before, and Tether has been burned before without a systemic panic.
Instead of $10B of tether being converted to USD and taken out of the crypto ecosystem, what I suspect has happened is that $10B of loans have been paid back in tether and the collateral has lost value so the borrower cannot re-borrow the tether. Bitfinex doesn't ever redeem tether for USD and that isn't how tether is burned.
This means that it is predominantly crypto backed, which will at some point collapse if crypto collapses, but it is much more intrinsically stable than Terra/Luna up until crypto fails.
Maybe I'm wrong and we're about to see Tether bolt for the exits and crash and take out all of crypto with it. But crypto has been through a worse crypto bear market before, and Tether has been burned before without a systemic panic.