Never short crypto it's a rigged casino, first of all. Second, the fact tether is trusted and used by exchanges is more out of necessity than desire. They would die if they had to ask their so called customers to verify their identities and so both sides look the other way and pretend in a classic emperor has no clothes situation. I'm sure the tether based exchanges are squirming in their pants as tether prints another 2 billion fun bucks per month.
Unless of course you have a theory about where an institution without a banking relationship, let alone an American banking relationship is storing just shy of twenty billion dollars US? And why legitimate investors are plowing two billion dollars per month into this scheme instead of putting it somewhere with audits and regulation like gemini or coinbase.
Kraken has many banking partners and do require KYC. A larger issue is that not everyone is in America but still require USD as is it is the most liquid exchange pair. I guess that this leads to many trusting USDT over American based tokenised dollars that are more subject to US courts. A better option could be DAI . though that is only backed by crypto assets thus far.
(1) Kraken is way more likely to have the money but that's not what I mean by a rigged casino. Arbitrage bots ensure that prices remain in lockstep between the frauds and the more legitimate, so while they may be good for the payouts, the price action remains as rigged as ever. I believe it's this model that Bitfinex relies on when they buy BTC with fake Tether, as they can then move it into legitimate exchanges that arbitrage bots have brought into lockstep and sell for cash.
(2) A larger issue is that not everyone is in America but still require USD as is it is the most liquid exchange pair.
Sounds like what they need is more liquid exchange pairs in global currencies instead of fictitious money.
Unless of course you have a theory about where an institution without a banking relationship, let alone an American banking relationship is storing just shy of twenty billion dollars US? And why legitimate investors are plowing two billion dollars per month into this scheme instead of putting it somewhere with audits and regulation like gemini or coinbase.