~ What if they are exiting tether right now? If you were an insider with that information, you would exit tether and buy something else. That could be bitcoin or something else and when enough people do the same thing then bitcoin would moon.
They key word here is, "insider". (knowing something that the majority don't) When that information becomes public, nobody will be able to get out because everybody will try to exit at the same time.
Right now everybody thinks (maybe not everybody) Tether is still OK and no danger ahead. (at least not in the foreseeable future).
Not saying that it is happening right now (i mean the tether collapse) but if it was happening, it would be just like this.
When the news hit the forums, it will already be too late for the Avg. Joe.
But Tether's market cap is 23 times smaller that that of BTC. Even if all the USDT in existence were spent on buying Bitcoin, although it would affect the price in the positive way, I don't think BTC would
moon because of that. I think, we are in a phase when no manipulations with other currencies can affect BTC price much.
I don't think Bitcoin's MC and Tether's MC have the same dynamics.
Many bitcoins are either lost or haven't move in the last 5-7+ years which means there are way less bitcoins in circulation than people think and that would mean bitcoin's actual marketcap is actually smaller than it looks and therefore it would also mean that bitcoin would get affected by the collapse of tether more than people think.
Marketcap is only one side of this story. What is even more important that 70% of the crypto trading volume comes from tether which means tether is responsible for the liquidity of all crypto assets by 70%.
Why do you think would happen when crypto markets lose 70% of its liquidity?