Traders use it, exchanges love it, and users, well, use it. But the tango with Tether is about to come to an abrupt halt, not because Tether isn?t fully backed, that?s not the right question, but because it?s backed by the wrong sort of dollars.
The post The Tether Typhoon is About to Make Landfall (Or Not) appeared first on LUXUO.

Eric Nguyen is busy at his computer, sending his Tether ERC-20 address so that a small business owner in Wilmington, Virginia, can send him 500 USDT as payment for website development. 

Nguyen, and scores of other designers, developers and online services providers from across the emerging world love USDT or Tether, as it?s otherwise known. 

Forget about credit cards and bank transfers, from Buenos Aires to Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh to Hangzhou, Tether is as good as the dollar, not just to circumvent strict capital controls, but also to avoid the payment of taxes. 
While the pandemic has accelerated the rise of the digital economy, providing opportunities for millions of people in the emerging world to deliver services from design to development, copywriting to customer support, it?s also accelerated the adoption of Tether.  

And for scores of freelancers and other individual service providers, there?s no better way than to be paid than by Tether, especially in countries with strict capital controls and taxes and bribes that would otherwise need to be paid. 

In many cases, Tether isn?t just convenient to re...