There’s a minimum of one cryptocurrency that seems impervious proper now to the notorious “Tether FUD” (concern, uncertainty, and doubt): Tether’s personal token.

USDT has largely held its greenback peg since Bloomberg reported Monday that the U.S. Division of Justice is investigating Tether, issuer of the most important stablecoin, for attainable financial institution fraud. 

The token, which serves as essential plumbing for the $1.6 trillion crypto market, has traded at $1 for many of its historical past, however previous scares have triggered it to briefly lose parity with the dollar. 

In 2018, for instance, USDT fell to as little as 92 cents on considerations about its collateral and about Bitfinex, the crypto alternate that shares house owners and managers with Tether. 

The response to the newest information is gentle by comparability:

Tether “will get sued each different day,” scoffed Darius Sit, co-founder of Singapore-based QCP Capital, who steered that the very properties of USDT that appeal to regulators’ ire are what give it utility.

“The FUD is the rationale [USDT] is well-liked, proper?” he stated. “There’s FUD as a result of it’s unregulated and other people use it as a result of the SEC (the U.S. Securities and Alternate Fee) can’t simply freeze it.”

On the identical time, the broader crypto markets have continued climbing: Bitcoin’s value is altering fingers at $39,30 7.84, up by 13.82% prior to now 24 hours, in line with CoinDesk 20. Some market observers have hypothesized that merchants could have rotated cash out of USDT and into bitcoin and different cryptos, sending the general crypto markets increased.

The “market clearly doesn’t care concerning the seemingly unhealthy DOJ information as a result of the sentiment has shifted to bullish,” stated Hassan Bassiri, vice chairman at Los Angeles-based asset administration agency Arca.

Different analysts and merchants additionally stated that the Bloomberg report felt extra like noise than a sign.

“My guess is that this isn’t one thing actually telling till [Tether] will get truly convicted of this crime,” Andrew Tu, an government at quantitative buying and selling agency Environment friendly Frontier, informed CoinDesk. “Additionally as a result of they’re being investigated for previous occasions, whereas the New York lawyer normal workplace settled with Tether only recently, the market in all probability doesn’t see the Tether stablecoin itself as being in danger.”

In keeping with the report by Bloomberg, which cited nameless sources, the DOJ is investigating Tether for a attainable offense performed “years in the past.” Tether issued a press release that stopped in need of denying the claims, calling them “stale” and “recycle[d].”

Earlier this yr, Tether and its sister crypto alternate Bitfinex settled an investigation by the New York lawyer normal’s workplace (NYAG) into whether or not the stablecoin issuer was overlaying up the lack of practically $1 billion in buyer funds.

One more reason why the markets seem unfazed by the DOJ information may very well be that Tether revealed the breakdown of its reserves for the primary time in Could, clearing out a minimum of some worries round USDT’s backing.

“After final time they disclosed their treasury allocation, folks got here to peace with it,” Annabelle Huang, accomplice at Hong Kong-based Amber Group, stated.

Stuart Hoegner, Tether’s normal counsel, additionally just lately stated in a CNBC interview that an audit for Tether may very well be “months away, not years” – the USDT issuer promised audits way back to 2017, however has but to provide one.

Hoegner’s remark got here as buyers have been demanding extra transparency from stablecoin issuers broadly. After Tether disclosed its reserves, Circle, the issuer of USDC (USDC) and Paxos, the issuer of paxos normal (PAX) and Binance USD (BUSD), additionally revealed the breakdowns of their reserves.