id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentences	flesch	summary	cache	txt
blog-dshr-org-8968		DSHR's Blog: Stablecoins			.html	text/html	4463	512	82	Initially, Tether claimed that it maintained a stable "price" because every USDT was backed by an actual USD in a bank account. The graph tracks the "price" of Bitcoin against the "market cap" of USDT. Since newly created USDT won't be immediately sold for "fiat", they will pump the "price" of cryptocurrencies. Tether adds the USD to the backing for USDT, and issues the corresponding number of USDT, which are used to buy BTC. Tether has a magic "money" pump, creating USDT out of thin air. So Tether needs to buy more USDT for BTC, which pushes the "price" of BTC down. The top 4 cryptocurrencies (BTC, ETH, XRP, USDT) account for $521B (83%) of the total "market cap"; the others are pretty insignificant. At the time, USDT's "market cap" was around $2.3B, so assuming Tether was actually backed by USD at that point, it lost 37% of its backing.	./cache/blog-dshr-org-8968.html	./txt/blog-dshr-org-8968.txt