Following the unpleasant story with UST stablecoin developed by Luna, traders and investors around the world are worried about the safety of their funds in stablecoin solutions like Tether that took a significant hit with millions of outflows appearing momentarily.
Thanks to the most recent research, blockchain sleuths found an enormous quantity of real USD that matches Tether "shockingly well." By funding Tether's stash, we can determine who is behind the project.
There are two key U.S. banks that service the digital economy and connect cryptocurrencies with the fiat world, Silvergate and Signature. In the last two years, Signature saw massive inflows of funds with total deposits reaching $260 billion in the 2020-2022 date range.
Tomiwabold OlajideThe same story applies to Silvergate, which states in its own documents that it is active in the cryptocurrency space and does not have much of an activity in the retail sector, which means deposits to the bank should come from one source only.
The most interesting part is the comparison between total deposits and the history of the market capitalization of Tether. In the provided table, the analyst notes that the stablecoin provided market capitalization matches one-to-one with the total deposits in the two banks combined.
Such a correlation cannot be accidental considering the variety of deposits other banks are having. The same number of deposits and Tether market cap could have been reached in one quarter or even a year, but 10 consecutive quarters is a pattern we cannot ignore.
The analyst notes that this fact does not mean that Tether is fully baked and secure to use, but it shows what the project is really about and what kind of banks are behind it.
Alex Dovbnya
Vladislav Sopov
Dan Burgin