Tether vs. the US Military. Who Will Win? | by Mark Helfman | The Capital | Feb, 2025

With JP Morgan’s latest criticism of Tether’s inability to comply with Congress’s stablecoin bills, you may wonder what the fuss is about.

Tether’s stablecoin, USDT, almost single-handedly holds the crypto market together. At $140 billion, with tentacles in all crypto apps and exchanges, it’s a big fuss. Anything that tanks Tether will tank the entire crypto market.

Critics call it the biggest crime scene in financial history, a Ponzi scheme of unfathomable proportions, and the last bastion of terrorists, drug syndicates, and money launderers.

Sounds pretty shady.

Is it, though?

USDT is a mirror image of the US dollar. A copycat. An imitation.

It exists because most of the world can’t get “real” dollars, but they can get a digital representation of the same.

The experts say that’s nonsense. The US dollar is worth something because the US government says so.

That government has a military to enforce its laws and treaties. Aircraft carriers, for example.

Does that military make the US dollar better than USDT?