... nobody would do that though. I can sell my BTC for USD on Kraken and withdraw to my bank account. And I have.

Kraken is the only exchange where you can actually exchange USDT for USD. However, at the time of posting, you can only redeem 320k Tether before the price of it will half. Only 320k out of 650M+ (and growing) has any real value. Where are the remaining 649780k USDT going to be redeemed for USD? (Hint: Not from Tether themselves, they clearly state in their own terms of service that they're not redeemable for USD).

Right, Tether is a scam. But my point is that Bitcoin can be sold directly for USD (not USDT) on some exchanges.

I like how you just sort of blithely say that tether is a scam when there’s nearly a billion dollars of it trading on margin, inflating the bitcoin price.

I haven't traded any BTC for years, but when I did, I was using Kraken. Why do you think Kraken isn't more popular now? It seems to be the least shady of the exchanges.

> Why do you think Kraken isn't more popular now?

When you try to place an order on Kraken it 100% of the time on the first try gives you some generic message that says something like "We're not sure if your order went through. Check back later." So you wait a bit, refresh, and it looks like it hasn't gone through, so you enter it again. You get the same message 5 times in a row. On the 6th try, your order goes through. Sometimes you end up with 2 orders going through because one you thought didn't go through just took longer than you had the patience for.

I'm being completely serious when I say this isn't something that happens occasionally; it happens every time.

They say they're working on a new engine or something that should be out in a few months, but it's a known and annoying problem for now. Other than that, I like Kraken and agree that it seems less shady than most.

Kraken is trash. The app always breaks. I gave up with it.

nope, I regularly sell tens of thousands on Gemini and GDAX. Never had any issues on Gemini, can wire $50k+ USD in and out at any time.

I've been sort of following the situation, At least they are protected against a bank run because they don't do withdrawals, only deposits. I think that at a bare minimum, if they are doing exactly what they say they are doing with no mistakes, they are extremely vulnerable to getting a bank account frozen.

I think this is a good overview of the basic numbers and banking situation: https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2017/09/15/2193370/crypto-tether...

> [no] withdrawals, only deposits

Oh, like write-only memory?

I'm sure there are people dumb enough to trade their dollars for tokens too. That doesn't mean dollars are worthless.

tether seems like garbage to me, I wouldn't trade BTC for tether.