The rumor is the backer is using the reserves to trade crypto. You won't ever see an attack on Teather during a crypto bull run as the reserves will be strong.
In the depths of a crash, the potential is definitely there. Last time Bitfinex bailed out Teather when its reserves came up short. So to really see Teather fail, we probably need a crypto crash and a weakened Bitfinex.
This is why people still use Teather. Even though it is risky, the current market dynamics make a failure unlikely.
IMHO failure due to embezzlement (Teather reserves stolen by an inside man) is a real possibility. The management team has already proven to be very shady...
I am really trying not to sound like a GCP fanboy, however:
I have never heard anyone say that the AWS toolset was anything but "an amalgam of individual projects developed separately." It is obvious from their UI that the different tools are run by different teams that have very different opinions on how things should be done. Just look at the various iterations of deployment management. ECS vs Lambda vs EKS vs classic EC2. All the UIs have different design standards and assumptions. It has gotten better over the years, but the AWS org chart is still peaking through the UI.
GCP is not much better. At least they had the advantage of starting later in the market cycle. They were able to see what worked and what didn't work at AWS and build a bit cleaner.
In the end we are talking about B2B systems targeting power user engineers. The control surfaces need to be powerful first, and easy to use is a distant second or third consideration.
Bitcoin futures are running at about 25% per annum carry.
They absolutely can find counterparties to take that trade, but it would be much more efficient to trade in the spot markets.
The real question is if they have custody operations setup to handle the coin.
I expect they outsource these backend operations to the likes of Coinbase, Gemini, or Fidelity.
They probably won't allow customers to transfer their Bitcoin out until they move custody in house, which is no easy task.
Whatever well respected means to you, there is probably someone that meets it.
If you like old guard financial entities, Fidelity has a custody service.
If you want an entity that has been in the space almost as long as Bitcoin and has never been hacked, Coinbase has a service.
If you want star power, Gemini from the Winklevii is your bag.
If you don't want to be asked a lot of questions and don't want to know a lot about your counterparty, I bet Bitfinex will be happy to help.
All of these (except the last) are insured and bonded by respected old guard insurers. I assume the insurance contracts are all written on fiat terms, so take them at whatever value you will. MtGox proves the usefulness of contracts imposed on crypto but adjudicated in fiat.
Of course, if you are an old school cyberpunk, you custody your own coins using a layered security approach designed and implemented by yourself. That sort of cowboy behavior is frowned upon by the SEC, so not really applicable to a public company. I would be surprised if Michael Saylor (the CEO) didn't self-custody at least some of his personal stash. Good luck getting him to talk about it though.
Bitcoin is growing up. It is being integrated into the existing financial infrastructure. The beauty of Bitcoin is that you get to choose how much you interact with these new on-ramps. If you want to stick to the anarco-capitalist foundational philosophies, more power to you. Literally, you retain more power in Bitcoin than fiat.
Don't expect the existing financial world to bend though. It will slot Bitcoin into the existing architecture and keep on keeping on.
Try open hand warmers designed to warm the blood on the top of your hand as it flows into your fingers. In my experience, these work great at keeping my hands warm while not reducing dexterity.
BCC meaning Bitcoin Cash? It is commonly called BCH now.
They are still around, with a few miners. They had a few forks which split and degraded their community significantly.
It is trading at about 0.013 BTC, which IMO is in line with their current impact.
Many of the people that originally saw Bitcoin as a payment processor (as digital cash) moved on to Bitcoin Cash.
The scalability issues were evident from the beginning. The idea of running Visa scale transactions on a shared ledger were debated back in 2010. Anyone paying attention knew the main chain would, at best, be a large scale settlement layer. Other layers would be needed for day to day transactions.
Shareholders were informed of the plan well ahead of the bitcoin purchases. They were offered the chance to sell their shares. Existing shareholders have proven they are onboard with this change of strategy.
I totally agree with you at the surface, and Microstrategy has been officially saying similar.
However, the company is starting to look more and more like a Bitcoin ETF. The CEO is out promoting bitcoin much more than his company's services. The stock is trading increasingly in line with the bitcoin price...
This may very well be a genius strategic move on their part, but lets call a spade a spade. At this point, in the eyes of investors, the company is increasingly tied to the success or failure of bitcoin.
Microstrategy is not storing their own bitcoin. There are well respected custody solutions available these days.
Execution is outsourced and insured, Microstrategy is bearing very little of that risk.
The word "risk" is overloaded in finance, unfortunately.
Your usage is not affected by the price being near all time highs. The parent's use is affected.