Tether’s peg is slipping, and an exchange-wide firesale has led to major price discrepancies between bitcoin’s BTC/USDT and BTC/USD trading pairs across the market.In the early hours of October 15, 2018, Tether’s USDT was trading at $0.92, the lowest asking price the coin has seen in 18 months. At the time of writing, the stablecoin still hasn’t made up enough ground to retain its $1 peg. On most markets, it’s currently trading around $0.96, though this figure is tied to bitcoin trading pairs. Against the USD on Kraken and Bittrex, it is trading at $0.92 and $0.90, respectively. A combination of exchange activity, related FUD and scuttlebutt could be the catalysts behind the sell-off. Bitfinex suspended fiat deposits on October 15, 2018, “for certain customer accounts in the face of processing complications,” a blog post reveals. In addition, Binance temporarily suspended USDT withdrawals for “wallet maintenance” due to “network congestion,” a measure taken after the exchange extinguished rumors that said it would soon delist tether.The discount has bitcoin trading at something of a premium against tether on exchanges with USDT/BTC trading pairs. On Binance, Huobi and Bittrex, for example, 1 BTC is trading for nearly 6,700 USDT.Contrast this with bitcoin’s price in USD/BTC markets and it becomes clear that tether’s sell-off is distorting prices across exchanges. On Coinbase Pro, Kraken and Gemini, bitco...
