...if they succeed in dragging down Tether, it will be a...

...if they succeed in dragging down Tether, it will be a systemic event.
More Hedge Funds Are Betting Against Tether as Crypto Melts Down
Professional investors got interested in shorting tether after the collapse of another stablecoin, TerraUSD

By Vicky Ge Huang

June 27, 2022 5:30 am ET


Short sellers have been ramping up their bets against tether, the world’s largest stablecoin, amid a broad market selloff that has called into doubt the financial health of some crypto companies.

In the past month, more traditional hedge funds have executed trades to short tether through Genesis Global Trading Inc., one of the largest crypto brokerages for professional investors. These trades are worth “hundreds of millions” of dollars in notional value, said Leon Marshall, Genesis’s head of institutional sales. He declined to be more specific.


Crypto exchange CoinFlex says ‘Bitcoin Jesus’ Roger Ver owes $47 million
Richard Lawler - 11h ago


One of the difficulties of cryptocurrency is figuring out who to believe. Case in point: the conflict between Mark Lamb, CEO of CoinFlex, and Roger “Bitcoin Jesus” Ver, an early Bitcoin investor. Lamb says Ver owes his company $47 million and is the reason the company froze customer withdrawals last week. Ver denies this and says that, in fact, CoinFlex owes him money.

© Illustration by Alex Castro / The VergeCrypto exchange CoinFlex says ‘Bitcoin Jesus’ Roger Ver owes $47 million
Experts Predict AU Dollar Can Vanish After This Announcement
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Well, things have gotten worse

CoinFlex, an exchange, froze withdrawals on June 27th, saying that it would restart withdrawals on June 30th with one condition: CoinFlex needs to sell tokens related to a debt owed by a “certain high net worth individual.” (The company did not initially name Ver.)

Eleven days ago, we pointed out a few crypto firms with problems that could cause further ripples throughout the industry and noted that things may get worse. Well, things have gotten worse. Uncertainty over crypto has reached a point where The Wall Street Journal reports hedge funds have begun to bet hundreds of millions of dollars that Tether will fall — which is odd, because Tether, as a stablecoin, theoretically has a set value of $1. Paolo Ardoino, the CTO of both Tether and the crypto exchange Bitfinex, called the short-selling attempts a coordinated attack to go along with “a new wave of FUD.”