The good news
The good news was that Tether appears to have been fully or near-fully backed.
This went a large way towards debunking many of the rumours around Tether and showing that some of people’s worst fears of the company were incorrect.
The bad news
The bad news was that Tether was no longer fully backed.
Bitfinex was using a third-party payment provider called Crypto Capital Corp, which was holding a large amount of Bitfinex’s funds for the purpose of processing its customers’ withdrawals. But at some point in 2018, US$851 million of Bitfinex’s money, held by Crypto Capital Corp, was rendered inaccessible, according to the New York Office of the Attorney General, which said it was told that the funds were erroneously seized and being held by authorities in several different countries.
As a result of this, Bitfinex now had an $851 million hole to fill. That’s when Tether stepped up to help, loaning its sibling company money taken out of its own reserves.