I've made it no secret that I think Tether is a centralized piece of garbage. It's an easy target for us folk in the decentralized community. They do a lot of shady shadow banking stuff but their product remains solid and used by the majority.
When you think about it, companies like Bitfinex have a lot to prove when it comes to this new technology that currently exists on the far fringe of society. It's like corporations in the old days; they actually had competition and workers were given a fair living wage... at one point... from some companies.
In any case, Bitfinex has something to prove, and I am especially impressed by their integration with smart-contract platforms. Already they have an Ethereum and Tron token that represents Tether, but the Ethereum token has the most volume out of anything.
This makes sense when we think about it because Ethereum is the biggest smart-contract network by a huge margin. Now any token on the Ethereum network (including ETH itself) can be atomic swapped for Tether at any time using decentralized exchanges. This is incredibly powerful interoperability.
Make no mistake, when Steem gets a bit more popular and SMTs are flushed out Tether will make a token here as well. Hopefully that incentivizes Steemit Inc to get their act together and fix our busted SBD peg. (Using MakerDAO template)
On a side note Ethereum is doing so well that I could take out a loan just as big as the one yesterday and margin trade it a second time. Truth be told, I'm not that bold. I'm liking my $135 liquidation cutoff at the moment. The price is bound to correct eventually.
Or is it?
I think Bitcoin will easily hit all time highs again within the next two months. What if Ethereum did the same? Sure, it's not nearly as likely because Bitcoin only has to 2x and Ethereum needs to 7x, but it is a possibility. In that insane instance Ethereum would probably just keep going up the whole time and never correct until Bitcoin started correcting; a highly unlikely scenario if I say so myself.
Window shopping is fun sometimes, but in that highly unlikely scenario I still make out like a bandit without making the overaggressive all-in play. No more gambling for me, thanks.
Conclusion
Tether is further spreading its roots into the cryptosphere by entering the interoperability phase much earlier than all the other projects. Every token on Ethereum, EOS, Cardano, Tron, ETC, NEO, NEM, QTUM, LISK, Steem, etc will all be allowed to atomic swap to a token representing Tether. Pretty smart. Why use a smaller cap stable coin when you can use the big boy network?
The atomic swaps are also key because it takes all the legal burden off of Bitfinex. They are going to allow us to anonymously atomic swap tokens for a stable coin and vice versa. Bitfinex can't be regulated in this way because they don't have the power/resources to do this kind of surveillance. Unlike with companies like Google and Facebook, the corporations of the future are going to stop doing all that heavy lifting for the government by building on decentralized structures. Not only is this more efficient and profitable, it's also more ethical.
