Tether is what's come to be known in financial circles as a stable coin. Stable because one tether is supposed to be backed by one dollar, but it's actually more like a bank. The company that issues the currency, tether holdings, takes in dollars from people who want to trade crypto and credits their digital wallets with an equal amount of tethers. There are now 69 billion tethers in circulation, forty eight billion of them issued this year. That means the company supposedly holds a corresponding 69 billion dollars in real money to back the coins,. It would make it one of the 50 largest banks in the us. If tether collapsed, well then it's going to gut the whole crypto