There were major players involved in other cryptocurrencies/stable coins that ultimately failed. There's absolutely no shortage (pun intended) of people who want to see Bitcoin and/or Tether collapse and have a vested financial interest in seeing it fall. If there were a verifiable reason for either of these to fail, it would.
Tether continues to survive for one simple reason, up to this point anyone has been able to redeem 1 USDT for 1 USD through Bitfinex and that ultimately is what holds the peg. Bitfinex themselves buy up USDT when it dips below 1 USD which is actually one of their sources of revenue and about 60% of all USDT is held on Bitfinex.
> up to this point anyone has been able to redeem 1 USDT for 1 USD through Bitfinex
What do you mean "up to this point anyone"?
For several years Bitfinex (who also assured everyone that they had NOTHING to do with Tether) or Tether would only let you redeem if you were a "whale" with over $30K in holdings, were a non US-national, were subject to a six month waiting period. Random people absolutely could not redeem say 10 USDT.
Also during that period people would post bounties, some of which were a couple of thousand dollars, for -anyone- to demonstrate that they'd been able to redeem, and none of those bounties were ever claimed.
Things might be different now, but let's not try to claim that it's all been all good so far.
> and have a vested financial interest in seeing it fall
Who can actually profit from it falling? The problem with shorting it is that you have to find someone who will remain solvent when Tether collapses to take the other side of the bet.
Tether continues to survive for one simple reason, up to this point anyone has been able to redeem 1 USDT for 1 USD through Bitfinex and that ultimately is what holds the peg. Bitfinex themselves buy up USDT when it dips below 1 USD which is actually one of their sources of revenue and about 60% of all USDT is held on Bitfinex.