> Well there's a notional $2.2bn worth of Tether that someone's holding on to, which is certainly enough to have got the price of a perceived buy-and-hold asset like BTC moving a lot.

This is what I don't get - who on Earth thinks that being long USDT is a good idea. Are they expecting the USD to dissapear? USDT to go to the moon?

I understand having to own USDT to get your money out of exchanges that don't deal with fiat... But you need a counterparty on the other side of the trade - someone who will give you perfectly good USD for USDT. How has that ecosystem managed to absorb $2.2bn?

Is anyone on Hacker News long USDT? If so, why?

Every time Bitcoin/Eth/etc is discussed, there's always people admitting to holding on to it because they expect it to increase in price. I don't agree with them, but that's speculation - you can still make money, even if you disagree with the fundamentals.

Why Tether? There's no speculative gains, and there's no fundamentals.