Stablecoin issuer Tether has announced plans to reduce the amount of trade debt it holds in reserve, while the company continues to be questioned about what it backs the cryptocurrency with. In another development, FIS, a $62 billion publicly traded fintech firm, has partnered with Fireblocks, a New York-based infrastructure firm, to provide more than 6,000 capital markets clients access to a comprehensive crypto suite. Accompanied by the news, there was a 2% increase in Bitcoin price and a slight increase in the altcoin market.
An important step has been taken regarding Tether’s disputed reserves
A large amount of commercial paper or short-term commercial debt was purchased by Tether last year. This has sparked controversy, as Tether has not disclosed which companies own commercial papers or where these entities are located. Still, the company’s reserves are declining in commercial paper. Tether’s total reserves in the fourth quarter of 2021 were just over 30 percent of commercial stock, up from 44 percent in the third quarter of the year.
Tether and its associated crypto exchange Bitfinex chief technical officer, Paolo Ardoino, told the Paris Blockchain Week Summit on Wednesday that “over time, we will continue to lower the commercial paper. We are not finished yet,” he said. Ardoino claims that Tether transferred money from this commercial paper to US treasury accounts. As a result, he said that work on transparency is ongoing and Tether’s new website has a lot of information on it. Estimating the price of Bitcoin below $50,000 at the end of the year, Ardoino is currently meeting some criticisms with his statements about Tether reserves.
Bitcoin and altcoins are on the rise, here’s why
In another market-motivating development, crypto custodian Fireblocks has partnered with FIS, a Fortune 500 technology provider to banks and capital markets firms. The partnership, announced recently, will give FIS’s 6,400 customers access to major crypto trading centers, liquidity providers, lending desks and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.
These clients include a variety of buy sides that include banks and brokers, as well as asset managers and hedge funds. Circle, the second largest dollar-denominated stablecoin with a market cap of over $50 billion, and payment processing company WorldPay announced their collaboration earlier this month.
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