Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream, published a post on Twitter launching a bet: will Bitcoin arrive first at a price of $100 thousand or will the stablecoin Tether (USDT) reach a market capitalization of $100 billion?
I wonder which will be first: #tether at $100bil or #bitcoin at $100k 📈🚀 there is correlation due to tether being a portion of exchange fiat inflows: wire USD, then buy BTC. https://t.co/QimEBoX6CD
— Adam Back (@adam3us) September 2, 2021
Adam Back on Tether
In his post, the CEO of Blockstream and well-known crypto influencer, as well as one of the names mentioned as a potential Satoshi Nakamoto, mentions the new milestone reached by Tether, which tweeted to thank its customers for reaching a market capitalization of $66 billion.
At the end of May alone, Tether had reached a market cap of $60 billion, a growth of over 600% in about a year.
Recently, USDT was also integrated as a stablecoin on Bitrefill’s gift cards through a partnership with the Bitfinex exchange.
The correlation between Tether and the price of Bitcoin
The bet stems from the fact that according to Back there is a correlation between the price of Bitcoin and the market cap of Tether.
There has in fact been talk of a close link between Tether and Bitcoin for years now. At the beginning of the year, for example, a study by Sentiment was also published which claimed that one of the main keys behind Bitcoin’s price increase would be Tether (USDT).
Contrary to what detractors may think, this analysis did not argue that Tether creates large amounts of USDT out of thin air to artificially pump up the price of BTC, but that when traders borrow large amounts of USDT they speculate with leverage on the increases of Bitcoin’s price.
And this relationship also works in reverse, as when Bitcoin increases, Tether needs to issue new tokens to the market.
Adam Back and Tether with Blockstream and iFinex
The relationship between Tether and Adam Back is very close. At the end of August, Blockstream received $210 million in a Series B round in which not only the British investment fund Baillie Gifford participated, but also iFinex, the very company behind the Bitfinex exchange and the Tether stablecoin (USDt, XAUt and EURt).
