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Tether Trading Volume Stalls as Battle with New York AG Ratchets Up

Trading volume in stablecoin Tether (USDT) has weakened in recent months, falling from more than $53 billion on Oct. 26 to less than $20 billion today, according to CoinMarketCap data. There has been no shortage of developments surrounding the Tether project, however, including more drama surrounding an investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James. We’ll get to that in a moment, but first, QuantumEconomics.io Founder Mati Greenspan illustrates an “ebbing” in Tether’s trading volume, particularly over the last couple of weeks in the below chart. This after Tether muscled its way into the top four cryptocurrencies based on market cap last month after many altcoins have seen their values plummet.

Source:

Greenspan also notes that over the past several months, Tether’s market cap hasn’t really budged.

Source: Greenspan on Twitter 

New York Battle

Tether has been under investigation by the New York Attorney General but is not taking it sitting down. The AG in recent days doubled down on its case against Tether and Bitfinex in a New York Supreme Court Appellate Division, the focal point of which is on the US dollar reserves backing the stablecoin. In a December court filing, the AG states:

“[Tether and Bitfinex] had, step by step, dissipated the cash backing tethers: first by going from actual cash in hand to $625 million in an inaccessible Crypto Capital account; and then by replacing even that questionable source of backing with nothing more than a $625 million IOU from Bitfinex.”

The Tether team has fired back, calling the AG’s claims “baseless” and noting that the New York AG is neither Tether’s nor Bitfinex’s regulator. In its retort, Tether states:

“Tether has proven itself to be a useful, liquid, and trusted digital asset in the crypto ecosystem, and its use case and market capitalization since the New York Attorney General began this proceeding has grown, not shrunk. Tether serves a key function in the digital economy, and the community’s chosen stablecoin is here to stay.”

Tether and Omni

Meanwhile, Tether is the “mainstream USD stablecoin,” boasting a “total capitalization of 80% of stablecoin markets,” according to Cointelegraph. Now Tether has revealed in a press release to Cointelegraph that it will sponsor the next core update for Omni,  Omni Core 0.7.0. Finance Magnates describes Omni as “a platform for creating and trading custom digital assets and currencies on top of the Bitcoin protocol.” The updates are comprised of “much faster indexing of transactions and the update to the decentralized exchange.”

It’s full circle for Tether, whose tokens were first hosted on the Omni protocol, though the stablecoin has expanded to other platforms since then. The breakdown of USDT circulation is as follows:

Cointelegraph warns, however:

“While holding USDT, you must remember that: – On the Omni and EOS blockchains, Tether can freeze owners’ tokens. – On Ethereum and Tron, they can add the account to a blacklist and destroy USDT. – On Liquid, such opportunities must also exist, since Bitfinex is a Liquid Member.”

 

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