It is one step closer to shutting the doors on Bitcoin as an isolated financial ecosystem. Bitcoin-to-actual-USD is a trackable / taxable event. Whales avoid it like the plague.
By moving to a pseudo-dollar like Tether, market makers can hang out while they wait for a suspect better buy-in price in the future. Should pseudo-dollars go way, they actual-Dollar transactions get a taxable haircut. Additionally, the friction of going from actual-Dollar to Bitcoin increases.
Tether is effectively behaving as a crypto-clearing house with their pseudo-dollar.
By moving to a pseudo-dollar like Tether, market makers can hang out while they wait for a suspect better buy-in price in the future. Should pseudo-dollars go way, they actual-Dollar transactions get a taxable haircut. Additionally, the friction of going from actual-Dollar to Bitcoin increases.
Tether is effectively behaving as a crypto-clearing house with their pseudo-dollar.