It assumes that the fraudulent stablecoin created by Binance, and involved in the vast majority of trades, (more 70%, a few days ago) unwinds.

https://crypto-anonymous-2021.medium.com/the-bit-short-insid...

https://bitfinexed.medium.com/tether-is-setting-a-new-standa...

USDC (the second largest stablecoin), isn't appreciably better.

Tether is associated with the Bitfinex exchange, not Binance.

Binance has its own stablecoin: BUSD

USDC is associated with Coinbase, the exchange that recently went public, so I'd assume it's far more trustworthy than Tether.

USDC is avoiding audits too.

This Binance?

https://wallet.tether.to/richlist

Binance has holdings in all sorts of cryptocurrencies that it has no involvement in the creation or minting of.

As a cryptocurrency exchange, Binance must hold Tether to operate.

As the most popular cryptocurrency exchange on the planet, they're likely to be on the larger end of Tether (and various other cryptocurrencies) holdings.

I'm not defending Binance here, I think there's fair potential that they're doing shady stuff, but they're not responsible, in any way, for the minting of billions of dollars of Tether, or involved in any of the dodgy accounting around Tether's backing.

Same goes for Huobi, who are second on that list. They're an exchange. Holding Tether is an essential part of being in that business.

There are also deep and to my mind suspicious links between the two, this fraud is a shared endeavour.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/a-by-the-minute-look-at-tethe...

I don't understand the implications of this assumption. Are you assuming that if the USD wasn't dominant then BTC would be better to hold?

BTC is functionally a security. Under any duress of the USD I'd expect it to perform no different than AMZN stock.

Nobody is actually using Bitcoin to pay for things, because it is a terrible currency due to fundamental design flaws. At this point the narrative of Bitcoin the world currency is dead, it’s now a get rich quick scheme.

No really.

If you traded your BTC for some non USD currency the same point remains.