Executive Order on Securities Investments that Finance Communist Chinese Military Companies
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Bitcoin’s most popular stablecoin Tether is being bought by Chinese OTC brokers for clients who want to buy Bitcoin, which is frowned upon by the government
decrypt.co
Chinese investors secretly buying Bitcoin helped fuel Tether’s $5 billion surge
Who says Bitcoin’s most popular stablecoin is backed by nothing? A new report says demand comes from China.
Chinese investors secretly buying Bitcoin helped fuel Tether’s $5 billion surge
Who says Bitcoin’s most popular stablecoin is backed by nothing? A new report says demand comes from China.
By Colin Harper
6 min read
Jun 11, 2020
One of the more titillating questions among Bitcoin watchers is, who’s buying all that Tether that’s propping it up? According to a new Sino Capital report shared with Decrypt, the answer is pretty simple: lots of Chinese investors are a part of the equation. And they don’t want you to know that they’re buying USDT, because the government frowns upon buying Bitcoin there.
That explanation helps address some of the criticisms of USDT, partly fueled by an academic paper that claims Tether was used to pump Bitcoin in 2017, and the claim that Tether’s holds fractional, three-fourth reserves. Critics have maintained that the company is merely “printing” the stablecoin without having any real buyers, and thus inflating Bitcoin’s price.
But one thing affecting the issuance of new Tether is throngs of Chinese buyers using over-the-counter brokers, according to the report.
"Our key point is that 1) OTC is an enormous market in China—far bigger than people think, and that 2) USDT is the crux of that flow," said Matthew Graham, CEO of Beijing-based Sino Global Capital, which prepared the report for Decrypt this week.
Shanghai Shuffle
Tether has added $5 billion worth of USDT into the cryptocurrency market since 2020, reaching a total market cap of $9 billion—10 times higher than any other stablecoin. The demand for much of that Tether is coming from—by some estimates—100,000 Chinese retail and institutional buyers who can’t access cryptocurrency market pairs otherwise.
“USDT is a very popular way for Chinese crypto investors to enter the market with most exchanges offering a range of OTC options,” the report noted.
The report explains the legal grey area that covers Bitcoin in China. While the government there recognizes Bitcoin as virtually property (and thereby does not ban ownership of the cryptocurrency), it banned exchanges. (Many of these exchanges moved their servers to other jurisdictions and still operate for Chinese citizens who use VPNs.)
Since 2018, China has also banned citizens from accessing foreign cryptocurrency services, and forbade banks from opening accounts with exchanges.
How Tether is used by Chinese investors
Cue USDT. The stablecoin is perfect for servicing a Chinese crypto clientele that has been shut out of the market by their banks and government, mainly because it’s highly liquid, integrated with all major southeast Asian exchanges, and permissionless.
These tokens are distributed by OTC trading desks, a brokerage model that became popular in China during its post-Cold War industrial boom as a way for retail investors to gain access to restricted markets. Depending on the operation, these OTCs will match buyers with sellers in China’s highly-networked, tight-knitted crypto economy or provide liquidity themselves
One anonymous OTC employee, who spoke with Decrypt, corroborated the report’s findings.
The employee pointed out that trading Chinese Yuan (CNY) for Bitcoin is not technically illegal, but anyone who does so will have their bank account locked or even closed. USDT to Bitcoin trading, then, is not wholly legal, but it is tolerated, the employee said.