Deltec, the Bahamian-based bank responsible for storing the reserves of Tether, the issuer of the stablecoin USDT, has just revealed it has a significant investment in Bitcoin.
The bank CIO Hugo Rogers said during a video published on January 14 that the company has an important investment in the benchmark crypto and has been investing clients' funds in the asset since the price of BTC amounted to $9,300. In particular, he said:
"We’ve maintained a very significant position in the beneficiaries of maximum monetization, so that does include gold, it includes other commodities as well. It also includes a large position in Bitcoin, which has received a lot of attention recently. We bought Bitcoin for our clients at about $9,300 so that worked very well through 2020 and we expect it to work well in 2021."
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It is worth mentioning that the company has not revealed when it made the investments in Bitcoin, however, according to data from Coinbase, the last time BTC traded at that level was in mid-July, so the company possibility started to invest in Bitcoin then.
Tether started to store its reserves at Deltec Bank in 2018 after ceasing its cooperation with Puerto Rico-based Noble Bank.
Tether has been the subject of several scandals in the past. For instance, in mid-2017, Wells Fargo, a bank that had been processing transactions in US dollars for Tether, decided to block them.
In addition, Tether's parent company iFinex is being investigated by the New York State Attorney General, an investigation that was unveiled in April 2019.
The crypto community has doubts the stablecoin USDT is truly backed by US dollars at a ratio of 1:1, as the company claims.
Now, the news Tether invests its clients' funds in Bitcoin only reinforces these doubts, as Tether might be backed by Bitcoin in some way.