Laura Shin just served crypto Twitter the perfect meme at the perfect time.

The latest Unchained Daily newsletter leads with the headline “Tether fires back as USDT solvency fears flare up again” – and pairs it with a cartoon that’s already becoming legendary:

A guy holding a handful of moldy purple grapes says, “Your grapes are rotten.”

The winemaker, beaming with pride while presenting a bottle stamped with the Tether logo: “They’re fermented. I’m making wine. Ta-da!”

It’s savage. It’s accurate. And it’s exactly how Tether sees every single wave of FUD that comes its way.

What Sparked This Round of Drama?

Late last week, S&P Global Ratings downgraded USDT’s stability rating all the way to “weak” – their lowest tier – specifically calling out Tether’s growing exposure to Bitcoin, gold, secured loans, and corporate bonds.

Arthur Hayes jumped in shortly after, pointing out that a 30% drop in the BTC/gold bucket would wipe out Tether’s entire equity cushion.

The usual suspects started screaming “insolvent” again.

Paolo Ardoino’s response? Basically the cartoon in human form: he called S&P part of a “broken, threatened traditional financial system” and said Tether wears their loathing “with pride.”

Because here’s the thing the critics keep missing: those “risky” assets have made Tether absurdly profitable. Billions upon billions in gains while everyone else was busy writing obituaries.

Rotten grapes? Nah. Vintage in the making.

Why Meme Coin Degens Should Care

Most meme token trading happens in USDT pairs. A real Tether scare (not this recycled FUD) would hit liquidity harder than a Sunday flash crash – and we just had one of those that absolutely cooked leveraged traders.

So far, though? USDT supply keeps climbing, redemptions keep working, and Tether keeps printing profits that make BlackRock look cute.

The rest of the Unchained Daily roundup was spicy too:

• Sunday’s flash crash showed zero mercy to over-leveraged degens
• yETH had a logic bug that let attackers mint infinite tokens
• CoinShares quietly stepped away from the spot ETF race
• Terminal Finance canceled its launch despite $280M in deposits

If you’re not subscribed yet, fix that. Laura and the team consistently deliver the sharpest daily takes in crypto.

Original tweet here: https://x.com/laurashin/status/1995463915862475069

Sometimes the best response to FUD isn’t a 40-page attestation.

Sometimes it’s just a cartoon of a guy holding a bottle of wine and saying “Ta-da!”

Cheers to that. 🍷