Stablecoin King Tether is Turning towards P2P Industry for Collab
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Leading stablecoin issuer Tether and crypto exchange Bitfinex in collaboration with Hypercore, a peer-to-peer data network

Tether, the issuer of popular stablecoin USDT, along with sister company crypto exchange Bitfinex and peer-to-peer (P2P) infrastructure platform Hypercore have launched Holepunch, a P2P platform intended to allow developers to build Web3 applications.Partners aim to bestow control over data while breaking technology monopolies with Holepunch, according to the announcement. Tether and Bitfinex funded the development of the Holepunch platform. Paolo Ardoino, the chief technology officer of Tether and Bitfinex, will lead the new initiative as the chief strategy officer.

1/#keet is out. A pure P2P video chat. Unstoppable, encrypted, no token, email, or phone number required. https://t.co/bMHsH2a8Si

Keet is the first app built on top of the #holepunch framework 🕳️🥊
Hole-punch is an SDK/Framework to construct any kind of P2P unstoppable app. https://t.co/eb1volhWzM

— Paolo Ardoino🕳🥊 (@paoloardoino) July 25, 2022

Keet will allow real-time audio/video calls, text chat, and file sharing. The app will utilize peer-to-peer connections to facilitate communication which will eliminate the risks of a central point of failure and over-reliance on third-party platforms.

The app also supports Bitcoin payments powered via the Lightning Network. Tether tokens will also be supported as the default micropayment system for businesses that want to build products on Holepunch. Moreover, Keet is powered by an innovative stack of distributed technology, including DHT distributed databases. This allows users to find and connect to form a swarm, on real-world home and office networks.

Over the last few days, Bitfinex has been sharing cryptic tweets about a launch. Earlier today, the trio above rolled out an encrypted application. This app allows users to carry out audio and video calls while exchanging texts and files. It should be noted that all of this would be done in peer to peer manner. It should be noted that Tether and Bitfinex poured funds into Hypercore to roll out Holepunch. The fully encrypted platform Holepunch was an initiative rolled out to aid in creating P2P applications, and Keet is reportedly a product of the same.

 

What is wrong with Tether?

The most popular stablecoin, Tether (USDT), experienced a drastic crypto crash in May-June 2022 with a fall in market cap from around US$82 billion to US$66 billion. Thus, Tether has decided to reduce or dump its commercial paper holding to mitigate the speculation of the quality of support for the US dollar-peg trust. The main aim of USDT is to bring down the figure of commercial paper holding to zero for its holdings in the US Treasury bonds.

Commercial papers are known as short-term unsecured debt continuously issued by any company. The value of commercial paper holding depends on the crypto companies focused on issuing it. The stablecoin management has denied all the claims regarding the commercial paper holding portfolio being backed by Chinese Commercial Paper or Asian Commercial Paper by 85%. Tether’s CTO has described this information as a piece of fake news with a mission to spread panic and fear among crypto investors of this USDT token.

Tether has exposed that the current commercial paper can be reduced to US$11 billion from US$20 billion at the end of Q1 2022. It will reach US$8 billion at the end of June 2022. The share of the commercial paper in the reserves of Tether had dropped drastically, whereas the reserves are fully backed. The Chinese CP and Asian CP holdings have started trading at a discount.