Noticed the crypto markets plunging? Well, if this report is true, then the real bloodbath is yet to come.
It's somewhat of a open secret that Tether was used to manipulate crypto markets. Whenever BTC price started to go down, suddenly there would appear a large infusion of Tethers (a 'stablecoin', whose value is pegged to dollar - 1USD = 1Tether), immediately used to buy BTC and the markets would recover. Just in the January of this year, there was close to $2 billion Tethers printed. By design that would mean that someone deposited $2 billion of actual, fiat, US Dollars somewhere and got equal amount of Tethers in exchange. Except the Tether issuers never showed any bank accounts, passed an audit, or proved that they have the funds in any other (credible) way. So, yeah, my bet is that it was a scam, either dirty money or outright fraud (maybe combination of both).
The trouble is that if Tether goes away, crypto market will probably tank, and hard, as there doesn't appear that there is true liquidity in the market. In other words, it's "sorry for your loss" time.
Full disclosure: I do hold some cryptos (mostly Ether), but liquidated most of it, and now regard it as Monopoly money and fully expect to lose whatever's left. I believe cryptocurrencies are a great idea, but currently available implementations are lacking (in both tech and governance).