By Kumar Natasha
On June 18, the website of the USDT stablecoin issuer was subjected to a massive DDoS attack. The attackers demanded a “ransom” from Tether, said Paolo Ardoino, CTO of the company.
“A ransom was demanded this morning from Tether to avoid massive DDoS attacks. They already tried it once. Usually we have about 2000 requests in 5 minutes. The attack brought the figure to 8 million requests in 5 minutes,” Ardoino wrote.
The tether.io portal allows you to exchange stablecoins for US dollars in a 1:1 ratio. The minimum redemption amount is 100,000 USDT.
According to the company’s CTO, Tether took measures to mitigate the effects of the attack, and the attackers “relaxed” the pressure on the system. He also emphasized that the incident will not affect the ability to redeem positions in USDT.
Despite the collapse of the cryptocurrency market, the stablecoin has maintained parity with the US dollar, but its capitalization continues to fall. It dropped below US$70 billion on Friday and is valued at US$68.15 billion at the time of writing.
USDT is down 18 per cent since early May. The capitalization of its closest competitor, USD Coin (USDC) from the Center consortium, on the contrary, grew by 12 per cent over the same period.
