According to a feature on the stablecoin in Bloomberg Businessweek, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried recently claimed that he had purchased billions of tethers to help with trading in other cryptocurrencies.
In an interview with Bloomberg in June at a sold-out bitcoin conference in Miami, Bankman-Fried said that utilizing tether, the largest of the dollar-pegged stablecoins has one major advantage over using dollars.
“Banks are apprehensive about working with crypto companies,” he stated. Tether’s main benefit for crypto exchanges, as Bankman-Fried mentioned, is its simplicity. Rather than transferring crypto to dollars, which may irritate banks concerned about money laundering, maintaining a stablecoin like a tether keeps the same value while making it easy to return to crypto.
Using tether as an intermediary currency is virtually an industry standard, according to other crypto dealers who talked with Bloomberg, despite serious doubts about whether the stablecoin is truly backed by dollars. Some tether users even believed in conspiracy ideas, such as that it was a CIA backchannel for dirty money or a government plot to follow criminals.
Using tether as an intermediary currency is virtually an industry standard, according to other crypto dealers who talked with Bloomberg, despite serious doubts about whether the stablecoin is truly backed by dollars. Some tether users even believed in conspiracy ideas, such as that it was a CIA backchannel for dirty money or a government plot to follow criminals.
With the DOJ pursuing a bank fraud case against tether executives for prior behavior, Bankman-Fried has remained committed to listing tether on FTX. In August, he stated that the stablecoin will not be treated any differently by his exchange.
“Tether is a cryptocurrency that, like any other cryptocurrency, can be traded on FTX,” he told CNBC. “On FTX, it isn’t treated exactly like a dollar. It’s a cryptocurrency that’s free to move around. It isn’t a critical portion of our USD basket, therefore the exchange doesn’t treat it as a one-to-one replacement for US dollars. It’s up to the market and users to decide “According to Bankman-Fried.
Following his CNBC interview, the 29-year-old crypto billionaire expressed his displeasure with the media’s focus on tether’s legal problems. He tweeted, “Eh barely 20% of the interview was about USDT, I’ll take it as a win.”
Eh only 20% of the interview was about USDT, I’ll take that as a win
— SBF (@SBF_FTX) August 2, 2021
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