It could be those, but nobody outside knows whether any Tether was actually redeemed though. They are alleged to have insider connections with a bunch of different parties so they could just have burned Tether that had been created from nothing and lent out to an insider.
This really dips into conspiracy levels: Tether has many customers who can redeem USDT for real dollars. Many companies do this and are very open/vocal about this. Our company has done this as recent as late last week.
Something I’ve been wondering is how Tether, which has a very difficult history of banking, has been able to pay out billions of dollars in USD in a few days (regardless of having it — even if they had it, I assumed it would be very difficult).
Can you share how your USDT was redeemed — was it to USD from a US banking institution (a wire?) or some other mechanism?
thank you! Very interesting. According to their latest financial reports, their volume of deposits doesn’t marry up with the claims made by Tether. Will be very interesting to see what Silvergate report as inflows/outflows at the end of the next quarter.