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. This still doesn't reconcile with what they have been saying. They have said several times that fiat funds are being
converted to cryptocurrencies. There's no possible way they can process fiat (at least in this time frame of 2 weeks). "Fiat money" then would be no different than BTE tokens.
Ostensibly, they are relaunching as an altcoin exchange. No fiat money, at least in the mid term.
Yes, to elaborate on the new structure, you can trade crypto to crypto (BTC/ETH for example), or BTC/BTE (crypto for BTC-e debt token). So in the mid term, if they look like they'll be repaying the BTE tokens, the BTE will approach 1:1 USD. As it approaches further and further, it could effectively become another "Tether" style crypto which is intended to follow the USD. If they can pull that off, they will effectively have replaced the need for USD with their own token which they control.
With a fully crypto exchange, BTC-e would be stronger than ever because the need to hold/handle fiat was the main point of failure this go around. Couple that with more secure hot wallets which can survive a similar server seizure situation, and move the servers to more secure locations, suddenly BTC-e becomes the closest thing out there to an invincible exchange.