It's impossible that they give people USD. They have no way to cash out USD. If there's no way to cash out USD, it's a token. It's just money they invented, because it's impossible to remove from the platform. Explain to me how 1 USD is different from 1 BTE in this scenario.
I don't think there is USD in the scenario. Indeed that's why BTE exists; because they can't process fiat money. I think that fiat holders must be getting cryptocurrencies + BTE, especially given what they said about conversion in their latest posts. They could only exist as a crypto-only exchange.
They have most of their coins. It's the 45% (or whatever percentage they still have after giving coin holders 55% of their coins) of coins (which calculating to 55% fiat) btce initially wanted to distribute to fiat holders in different coins, thus they are hopefully going to create fiat buy orders with their remaining coins for market prices and we in fiat can then buy them.
Also, they are not refunding,
they are relaunching their exchange resulting in people start trading again. Adding to that, they will limit withdrawals, so forcing people to trade. I believe that most of the Russian speaking people will continue to use them, because they do not have an alternative.
Fiat holders are fucked or fiat holders are fucked only if they panic sell. Cannot decide yet.