As reported by U.Today, in May 2024, Ripple Chief Executive Officer Brad Garlinghouse, while talking about crypto and blockchain on a podcast, mentioned that he expected a “Black Swan event” to happen to Tether over its chief product — USDT.
Recent news report by the WSJ showed that this gloomy forecast might be coming true. Leaping ahead, it is important to note that the Tether CEO denied the WSJ report, calling the information published in it “unequivocally false.”
Garlinghouse in May 2024: "U.S. government going after Tether"
Talking to the host of the “World class” podcast Chris Vasquez in early May, Brad Garlinghouse stated that he felt it was clear that the U.S. government would soon be “going after Tether.” That was the time when Ripple announced the upcoming launch of its new product — the Ripple U.S. Dollar stablecoin (RLUSD).
Back then, Garlinghouse said that he expected a Black Swan event to happen to crypto. As an example of the “prelude” he named the collapse of the FTX exchange and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried heading to jail definitively, and also the situation with Binance its its legendary CEO Changpeng Zhao.
CZ has spent four months in prison — between May and October — and has been released at the end of September. He has also been banned from running Binance for life by its current CEO Richard Teng.
Garlinghouse said that you cannot really predict a Black Swan, because such an event is meant to be unpredictable and emerge out of the blue. However, he shared his concerns about the future of Tether and his expectations about the government likely to go after it.
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Tether CEO denies government's crackdown
As covered by U.Today, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino reacted to the WSJ report about the U.S. government conducting a criminal probe into the company. Ardoino underscored that Tether deals “regularly and directly with law enforcement officials to help prevent rogue nations, terrorists and criminals from misusing USDT.”
“We would know if we are being investigated,” he stated, adding that the article’s claims are far from the truth and “the allegations in the article are unequivocally false.” While the publication of the WSJ article pushed Bitcoin down to $66,000, the world’s leading cryptocurrency later managed to recover and recapture the $67,000 level.
At Tether, we deal regularly and directly with law enforcement officials to help prevent rogue nations, terrorists and criminals from misusing USDt. We would know if we are being investigated as the article falsely claimed. Based on that, we can confirm that the allegations in…
— Paolo Ardoino 🤖🍐 (@paoloardoino) October 25, 2024
