Yes, free money inflates risky assets, but it's also just supply and demand. Mining rewards got halved, so miners can't sell as many BTC as used to do after mining a block, so the supply of BTC just went down significantly.

The more macro stuff like worries about inflation due to the Fed printing $$$, easy money (0% interest rates), and yes, some FOMO speculation is increasing demand.

As far as I'm concerned this is working as intended. This is not the first boom / bust and this won't be the last.

Tether has accounting problems and remains a systemic risk. But this is mitigated by several factors. First, they are semi-audited and most educated guesses suggest they are collateralized one-to-one with $ at 70% or more. Second, tethers have become less systemically important over time, as other, better audited (or collateralized) stables have taken market share — this trend will likely continue. Third, tether brr doesn't compare to Fed brr and never will be able to, so ultimately, this won't matter in the long run.

Sources I’ve seen say Tether has been completely un-audited for years and only a fool will think they’ll keep collateral dollars for their Ponzi scheme.

Any sources for this? I've been trying to read up to understand how / when Binance decides to print USDT and what they do with it once it's on their exchange.

e.g., https://twitter.com/whale_alert/status/1333809716301094912

Tony Arcieri's take is pretty good, too, and extremely succinct https://twitter.com/bascule/status/1329580017446047748

I'm late for an appointment, but...

I'm reminded of the example of the closing years of the Kuomintang in China, where they were suffering from massive hyperinflation. Small businesses and co-ops would bet temporary loans from the central government in its banknotes but immediately change it to silver if possible to do business with, so they wouldn't have to deal with the debasement of the real currency over the course of the year.