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Bitfinex and Tether reached a $18.5 million settlement with the New York Attorney General (NYAG) over allegations that they hid the loss of commingled client and corporate funds and misrepresented the truth about the reserves backing Tether’s USDT stablecoin. The two firms also agreed to provide to the NYAG quarterly reports on the composition of Tether reserves over the next two years, starting within ninety days of the February 18, 2021 effective date of the settlement. Without admitting or denying any wrongdoing, Tether committed to publicly share these reports. However, the lawsuit did not cover the rumored role of Tether in a huge BTC pumping scheme.

According to the Financial Stability Board, stablecoins are crypto-assets that aim to maintain a stable value relative to a specified asset, or a pool or basket of assets. U.S. dollar pegged USDT is the biggest stablecoin by market capitalization.

Although USDT’s market capitalization is a small fraction of BTC’s ($35 billion versus $940 billion on February 24, 2020) in terms of trading volume it is by far number one. USDT’s main use case appears to be as a crypto-asset trading on-ramp for residents of countries where there are crypto-asset trading bans and/or capital controls, and as a “reserve currency” for unbanked exchanges.

Is USDT fully backed U.S. dollar assets?

Tether claims that USDT is always 100% backed by currency and cash equivalents, plus “other assets and receivables from loans made by Tether to third parties, which may include affiliated entities.” In an ongoing lawsuit launched in 2019 by the New York Attorney General (NYAG) against Tether parent iFinex, it came to light that Tether had loaned $850 million of USDT’s reserves to its sister company Bitfinex. Since then, Tether has been dogged by suspicions that USTD is not 100% backed by U.S. dollar assets, although Tether claims that the Bitfinex loan has been paid off.

Tether has not helped its cause with its opacity regarding USDT’s reserve holdings. Although not audited, other stablecoin issuers at least publish monthly attestations that they are fully backed. However, attestations remain very vague about what comprises the reserves. The last time Tether published anything like an attestation for USDT was in 2017., but claim full details will be released later in 2021.

What kinds of assets back USDT?

But even if USDT’s are fully backed, questions remain around what they are invested in, although the other stablecoin issuers are not paragons of transparency. The USDC attestation report only tells us the reserves are held in segregated accounts at US federally insured depository institutions and in approved investments. The BUSD and PAX reports are equally vague, telling us that the reserves are held at US depository institutions sometimes in amounts backed by debt instruments expressly guaranteed by the full faith and credit of the US Government. Gemini’s attestations seem more transparent and imply that all of the reserves are invested in US Treasury securities.

The perception that Tether’s investments aren’t exactly top-tier, is not contradicted by the redemption restrictions: “Tether reserves the right to delay the redemption or withdrawal of Tether Tokens if such delay is necessitated by the illiquidity or unavailability or loss of any Reserves held by Tether to back the Tether Tokens, and Tether reserves the right to redeem Tether Tokens by in-kind redemptions of securities and other assets held in the Reserves.” (Crypto traders get around this by buying BTC with USDTs on an exchange that trades the BTC/USDT pair, transferring them to an exchange that trades the BTC/USD pair, and cashing them out.)

Is Tether part of a Bitcoin pumping scheme?

Some claim that USDT issuance is part of a BTC price pumping scheme. For example, a 2019 paper found that Bitcoin purchases with Tether “are timed following market downturns and result in sizable increases in Bitcoin prices. Rather than demand from cash investors, these patterns are most consistent with the supply-based hypothesis of unbacked digital money inflating cryptocurrency prices.” See also David Gerard’s succinct description of the process in this Twitter thread.

But according to Frances Coppola, USDT’s asymmetric mechanics both support and disprove this claim. An opposing theory says that what look like BTC pumps are merely Tether reacting to BTC price volatility by supplying more “lubrication” to markets. The “lubrication” idea stems from Tether’s key role as a “reserve asset” for unbanked crypto platforms. Also, a recent paper used USDT deviations from its fiat currency peg to show that USDT acts as a “safe haven” for crypto-asset investors. They found evidence of significant premiums over parity during the crash in non-stable crypto-assets in early 2018 and during the March 2020 COVID-19 crisis. Discounts were found to derive from liquidity effects and collateral concerns. For example, USTD spiked to as low as around $0.90 in April 2017 when doubts were raging about the sufficiency of Tether’s reserves.

So, if BTC’s price is falling, investors wanting to cash out is likely to increase demand for USDT, which will in turn raise its price. In normal circumstances, arbitrage is probably sufficient to maintain the peg. But when BTC is experiencing high volatility – in either direction – demand for USDT can increase far faster than arbitrageurs can bring it down. To prevent the dollar peg breaking, therefore, Tether must respond to this extra demand by issuing more USDT. And issuing more USDT increases exchange liquidity, making it easier to purchase or sell BTC and therefore feeding the price movement. So wild swings in BTC’s price might not be triggered by USDT issuance, but they… can be fed by it.

Conclusions

If Bitfinex and Tether follow through on their commitment to be more transparent about Tether’s reserves, rumors about USDT being backed by flaky assets may be put to bed, although questions remain around possible Tether BTC pumping. Also, it is a big if! However, the NYAG settlement does reduce a major crypto market black swan risk if, as Bryce Weiner believes, the market plumbing absolutely depends on USDT, making it effectively too big to fail.

Most institutional investors participate in crypto-asset markets through investment funds like Grayscale Investment’s closed-end trusts. As publicly traded trusts that report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, they relieve investors of concerns about storage, custody and security of their holdings. Grayscale is the dominant crypto fund manager with over $37 billion assets under management. This blog explores some of the market dynamics associated with the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC).

For example, Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) has accumulated more than 3% of total Bitcoin supply, and an even higher proportion of liquid supply. (Glassnode analysis found that only 22% of outstanding Bitcoin are considered liquid, i.e., currently in constant circulation and available for trading.) Grayscale also runs eight other single-asset crypto trusts and recently incorporated twelve more such trusts although they have yet to launch. However in this post we’ll focus on GBTC.

Although accredited investors can buy GBTC directly from Grayscale at NAV, many institutional investors cannot take this route because GBTC shares have a six-month lock up period. (According to SEC Rule 144, restricted securities issued by an SEC reporting company like GBTC are subject to a minimum holding period of 6 months.) Hence, these investors are forced to buy the shares at a premium over the native asset value (NAV) in the secondary market, and these premia can be significant:

Source: https://ycharts.com/companies/GBTC/discount_or_premium_to_nav

Price premia over NAV occasionally appear on exchange-traded funds (ETFs) but they rarely exceed about 3%. When they do, authorized participants step in to arbitrage the gap away by creating or redeeming shares of the ETF.

However, some have pointed to a scheme by which the premium could be arbitraged. It involves buying GBTC directly from Grayscale at NAV and shorting free-trading GBTC. Six months later, the two positions net out leaving a risk-free profit. This glosses over risks like not being able to borrow and fund GBTC for up to six months. JP Morgan analysts have estimated the cost of this premium monetization trade at 10-15% per annum. The GBTC long position could also be hedged with BTC futures contracts. However, the fact that the premium continues to exist, implies that such arbitrage is not consistently taking place.

That same JP Morgan analysis concluded that the introduction of a U.S. Bitcoin ETF would be positive for Bitcoin over the longer term but could be short-term negative. It would erode GBTC’s effective monopoly status and could cause a cascade of GBTC outflows and a collapse of its premium. This could have negative near-term implications for Bitcoin given the flow and signaling important of GBTC. And some think that the chances of the SEC giving the green light to a Bitcoin ETF is looking good.

There are two active Bitcoin ETF filings with the SEC: VanEck Bitcoin Trust (submitted in December) and Valkyrie Bitcoin Funding (January 22). In the past, there have been many unsuccessful attempts, all of which were rejected by the SEC on the grounds that the underlying crypto-assets are too subject to market manipulation and liquidity is insufficient. However, some are heartened that SEC Director of the Division of Investment Management Dalia Blass, who oversaw the rejections, is stepping down, and Gary Gensler, President Biden’s nomination as SEC Chairman, is known as very crypto savvy.

Meanwhile, Grayscale competitors are sprouting up. Osprey Bitcoin Trust launched with a 0.49% management fee (versus GBTC’s 2%). BlockFi and Bitwise have followed suit with similar offerings. However, the business models of Grayscale and all such funds hang on whether the SEC will continue to push back on crypto-asset ETFs.