Here's one blatantly noticeable difference that makes me more trustful of USDP than USDT even without being informed about Pax : total USDP in circulation ("market cap") went down nearly 50% when Bitcoin and cryptos crashed in May-June [0], as you would expect if they indeed offer an off-ramp to USD as people will be bailing out in downturns and if the coin is pegged to cash flows.

USDT? Up and up, it has not once significantly went down [1]. Do people truly believe that they are pegged to treasury and money flows to Bitfinex (despite knowing it is BS) and that they've never been in a significant out-flow period? (Edit: There is one I notice in October 2018 of also nearly 50% from $2.8B, much later than the actual 2017-18 crash. Doesn't take away from the peculiarity of the rest of the chart, but gotta point it out in fairness.)

Anyone with significant money in crypto should be terrified by these sketchy money printers (the irony) rather than complacent of. If and when something like Tether blows up, these are dozens of billions in liquidity that will go poof over night.

[0]: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/paxos-standard/ (click market cap)

[1]: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/

Right, the redemptions. The counterpoint to that is how much do people withdraw from their investment accounts? They just go to cash within their investment accounts, while other people are still earning and depositing.

The same standard would apply to Bitfinex. Only explicit tether redemptions for fiat at the issuer cause tethers do be destroyed. People just sitting in database-fiat on the exchange during a risk-off moment wouldnt cause tether redemptions.

If a more respected exchange like say TD Ameritrade issued a stablecoin upon every deposit, it would go up and up and up too, even in market crashes, as people use their investing accounts as value storage even in market crashes, anticipating to buy dips or wait for other market conditions.

There are just enough behaviors to explain it and enough subpoenas by US authorities that also inspected this and matched this contrarian view.

Maybe tether just hopes to be so entrenched and trusted that they become their own "Central bank of crypto". Doubt it would work considering the whole point of crypto is "minimal trust", but being the money printer could be a valid business model.

An understatement, it's a fantastic business model. As I recall they have less than 12 employees, and they have printed like $80B with zero accountability. There's a saying that a good and strong business has a licence to print money, in their case it is literal.

Frankly I am baffled it is still going, I think it has to do with it being the first, but can't understand it hasn't fallen apart since or been taken over by better designed stable coins. People called Bitcoin fairy dust, but at least its supply is determined by its protocol and its price by a market - poorly regulated as it may be. Tether is proper fairy dust, holding together thru sheer wishful thinking of this tacit agreement that it is worth $1 a pop.

> usually create tethers 1:1 in response to deposits the vast majority of times

This as quite often been in whole round billions in the middle of the night on a weekend ...

> people in the east actually deposit fiat into bitfinex

In non-convertible RMB?

I appreciate that the demand for a way round currency controls is a big driver for cryptocurrency, but I'm still not clear how that sustainably functions.

Which doesn't inherently imply anything.

Are those country’s financial networks so primitive that a transaction message cant be sent on a weekend like in antiquated networks?

There is also other fiat than mainland RMB