New evidence suggests that despite claiming to have backing for each Tether (USDT) in dollars, the Tether Inc. company may not have the funds. The markets were shaken by this suggestion which USDT are not backed by dollars, and the funds may be flowing somewhere or never exist. The news gained lots of attraction since the importance of USDT remains high n the cryptocurrency trading ecosystem (more than half of all BTC trades were in USDT pairs as of December 26).

Tether once claimed that they used the services of Bahamas-based Deltec bank. Hence, researchers tried to extract information from the Central Bank of the Bahamas about large amounts of dollars entering the local money supply.

After analyzing the central bank’s monthly reports, researchers found out that Tether did not move funds into Deltec Bank. This information goes against an earlier claim, in a letter a supposedly sent by Deltec Bank, mentioning Tether has sufficient funds to back all USDT.

Zerononcense blog analysts also stated that there is no corresponding change in the reports of the Bahamas central bank at the time when Tether claimed to move funds from Noble bank, its previous provider, into Deltec. Nonetheless, there was no report of any remarkable change in the foreign reserves that flowed into the Bahamas banking system in this analysis.

Moreover, this stable coin has now taken over one-fourth of all digital asset trades, up from usual levels around 18% a few months ago. Simultaneously, the share of BTC in all trades was lowered to 30%, revealing that USDT pairs are getting crucial, traders are selling into USDT positions for extra stability.

The Tether treasury mopped up nearly 1.3 USDT from circulation at the end of October, while burning 500 million USDT, keeping the rest for interventions. As of December 26, the Treasury held 626,678,763 USDT, and has not intervened by injecting coins on Bitfinex since November 26.