macrocephalopod

So if nobody in the USD/EUR commercial paper world has heard of Tether, who are the major Chinese CP dealers? Someone, somewhere has to be selling these guys product right?

Do they?

BBG says they "obtained a document showing a detailed account of Tether Holdings’ reserves. It said they include billions of dollars of short-term loans to large Chinese companies" so I'm taking that at face value

Chinese company goes direct to tether, writes them an IOU, and tether sends the USDT?

This would be great

Seems like the most plausible doomsday scenario to me. The credit ratings in that case wouldn't be on the CP but on whatever beneficial entity Tether cut a deal with right?

Yes but that would of ignore the seniority of whatever the loans were likely making them riskier than the company generally. Also loans backing tether collateralized with bitcoin also could feed into the problem.