If you look at the timeline for tether it seems even more suspect. In late august of 2020 there are 10 billion tethers in circulation. They supposedly grew 8x in less than 2 years while being under investigation for bank fraud and a litany of other problems. They've never had an audit of their reserves, and the public behavior of their executives does not inspire confidence.

Here's how this plays out in the next few months. Tether had a first mover advantage, but now there are other competitors that are functionally equivalent but have better guarantees of their asset backing. So now anyone who holds tethers should prefer holding a purely superior product. Why would anyone take any additional risk without upside? So they now enter a death spiral, since there is no reason for them to exist. The best possible outcome is that all of their assets are liquidated and somehow everyone is paid in full. The more likely outcome is that we find out the extent of the fraud when they halt redemption of tethers to their customers.