Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin had a major scare when CTO Paolo Ardoino confirmed that its website Tether_to was under a massive DDoS attack. “They tried already once. On a normal day, we have around 2k reqs/5min The attack brought us to 8M reqs/5min”, he wrote.
Ardoino further informed that the attack has been mitigated by Cloudflare but it still left ‘I’m under attack mode’ enabled” as a preventive measure.
According to the top exec, the additional security move “won’t affect the ability to redeeming”.
Recently the blockchain-enabled platform released a blog dispelling gossip over its commercial paper holdings. Rumors were doing the rounds that 85% of Tether’s reserves are commercial papers and that are being traded at a 30 percent discount in China and Asia.
The firm then alleged that those were “coordinated” conspiracies trying to profit at a testing time.
“These rumors are completely false and likely spread to induce further panic in order to generate additional profits from an already stressed market,” the blog states. “Tether condemns such attempts which oftentimes see simple users take the biggest hit, while few coordinated funds increase their profits.”
“Tether Always Maintained Adequate Reserves”
In 2021, Tether was fined $41 million by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission for making “untrue or misleading statements and omissions of material fact” about its reserves.
In its response, the team stated that “it has always maintained adequate reserves and has never failed to satisfy a redemption request” and that the CFTC had only found that “the reserves were not all in cash and all in a bank account titled in Tether’s name, at all times.”
Apart from that, the firm through its latest blog sought to allay additional concerns with a report dated March 31, which reaffirms that “over 47% of total USDT reserves are now US Treasuries and that commercial paper makes up less than 25% of USDT’s backing”.
On a final note, the Tether chose to dissociate itself after reports emerged that it might be the next to go down in the market bloodbath after lending platform Celsius’ and crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capitals’ near insolvency crisis.