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U.S. Regulators to Subpoena Crypto Exchange Bitfinex, Tether

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Re: U.S. Regulators to Subpoena Crypto Exchange Bitfinex, Tether

#361

Post by darawk »

FireBeyond wrote: post #358
darawk wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to bat for them. I'm explaining the way i've reasoned about the situation. If you disagree with my reasoning, feel free to explain why. Here's the chain: 1. Bitfinex claims to offer wires to Taiwanese accounts. 2. Bitfinex does redeem Tether 1:1 for USD (nominally, within your Bitfinex account). 3. Bitfinex claims to wire that redeemed USD to any Taiwanese account without delay or haircut. Now, given th…

You are going to bat for them, in the fact that this comment is the first where you've made any note of "claims", and "expects". All your other posts on this thread have made these as statements of fact. "Bitfinex offers wires", "Go ahead and open an account right now", etc.

So, you don't have an alternative explanation of the facts then?

Re: U.S. Regulators to Subpoena Crypto Exchange Bitfinex, Tether

#362

Post by AlexCoventry »

tinus_hn wrote: post #160
onewhonknocks wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Thank you for saying so. edit: is there a way to bold text in an HN comment?

Thankfully, no there isn’t.

𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝘂𝗽𝘀, 𝗮𝗻𝘆𝘄𝗮𝘆...

Re: U.S. Regulators to Subpoena Crypto Exchange Bitfinex, Tether

#363

Post by frakr »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #343
sna1l wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like the local government can still make it difficult for them to enforce the subpoena, but I imagine Hong Kong will be pretty amenable. [1] [1] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vl90MA... Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, just found this from a cursory search.

I think of Edward Snowden. HK helped him.

Did the gov there actually help him? Or just not hinder him?

Re: U.S. Regulators to Subpoena Crypto Exchange Bitfinex, Tether

#364

Post by Mtinie »

oculusthrift wrote: post #302
zaroth wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably GDAX...? I’m sure it wouldn’t be as smooth as pushing buttons and they would likely want something stating where you got the coins.

yeah they only let most people withdraw 10k a day. some guy owed millions on taxes but couldn’t withdraw it fast enough to pay..

You can request an increase to your limits. For a customer with a large, verified portfolio I’m sure Coinbase would work with you if you needed to move funds in large amounts.

It may not be overnight, and there may be additional fees, but it’s not going to take 100’s of days to move $1M unless you aren’t trying very hard.

Re: U.S. Regulators to Subpoena Crypto Exchange Bitfinex, Tether

#365

Post by frakr »

mancerayder wrote: post #324
zik wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't ever keep coins on an exchange. Use a hardware wallet. If you don't have them in your possession they're not really your coins and you can get "Goxed" - ie. the world's largest exchange at the time, Mt Gox, disappeared with most of the user funds.

Yes, all reasonable paranoia. However I do trust Coinbase/GDAX as far as BTC, ETH LTC are concerned. It's a pain to store a few K USD worth of altcoins in my hw wallet (which I'm not even sure supports most of them). What if I'm at work and an event happens that makes me want to sell? The wallet requires an app to be installed. If there's a hint of an issue with Bittrex, I'll trade to ETH and move them to GDAX. Am I…

Based on my research it seems like Bittrex allows the trading of Tether and lets people cash out to USD. Poloniex also. Seems like a round about way of getting USD out of Bitfinex.

Re: U.S. Regulators to Subpoena Crypto Exchange Bitfinex, Tether

#366

Post by spookthesunset »

andrewla wrote: post #309
spookthesunset wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, when you deposit your USD in Chase Bank, you don't have USD, you have "Chase USD credits" which you can withdraw, subject to their limitations, on demand. No, I have USD in my account when I deposit to Chase. I can go to Chase and say "give me my fucking money" and they'll give me sweet cold, hard dirty fiat dollars with, in general, no questions asked. I deposited in dollars, my account balance is denoted in…

You try it - try to get more than 10,000 USD cash out of your bank, and then tell me how sweet that fiat money is (much less doing this without any questions asked). This is not to send out the ridiculous trope of “fractional reserve banking is a fraud” or anything; Chase, for the moment, is solvent, and recent events have made it clear that the Federal Reserve will sooner barbecue children than let a bank customer n…

One thought though...

> inexplicably, kept their position as the market leaders.

Only because there is apparently a large segment of people who do not have functioning critical thinking skills. I know HN doesn't like to do politics, but there is a huge overlap, at least in terms of thought process, in the people who support a particular president and those who support bitcoin. Both seem to lack any kind of critical thinking and both dismiss anything negative about their worldview as "FUD". It is pretty amazing human behavior if at least one of the two categories didn't have some very negative real world consequences...

Honestly, both could almost be considered a very large cult.

Re: U.S. Regulators to Subpoena Crypto Exchange Bitfinex, Tether

#367

Post by Animats »

charlesdm wrote: post #344
Animats wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They went completely over the top as a phony bank. Their web site is down, but archived by the Internet Archive.[1] They claimed to be a VISA card issuer. They claimed to own a FDIC-insured bank. They claimed to have ATMs. Plus they had a make-money-fast scheme where their "AIs" would invest for you. The only real question is "why aren't they in jail yet?" [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20180110101846/https://www.ar…

Easy: they're probably not based in the US

On business law, the US works well with Taiwan and Hong Kong. Mainland China is harder. But with China cracking down on Bitcoin, fleeing to the mainland would be risky.

Re: U.S. Regulators to Subpoena Crypto Exchange Bitfinex, Tether

#368

Post by spookthesunset »

andrewla wrote: post #312
spookthesunset wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anybody here on HN been able to go $ANYTHING -> USD on Bitfinex? I haven't seen anybody anywhere claim they've gotten USD out of Bitfinex...

Search around on the Bitfinex subreddit. For example: https://www.reddit.com/r/bitfinex/comments/7rbfca/ticket_636... The thread here is about Bitfinex not writing money, but on the thread a couple of similar issues get resolved. Could be shills or Bitfinex oiling squeaky wheels. I too would love to see someone here on hn post about their experiences, though.

> Could be shills or Bitfinex oiling squeaky wheels. I too would love to see someone here on hn post about their experiences, though.

Completely agree. You'd think with the reach of this place, you'd get a couple people who have done it.

Re: U.S. Regulators to Subpoena Crypto Exchange Bitfinex, Tether

#369

Post by [deleted] »

andrewla wrote: post #309
spookthesunset wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, when you deposit your USD in Chase Bank, you don't have USD, you have "Chase USD credits" which you can withdraw, subject to their limitations, on demand. No, I have USD in my account when I deposit to Chase. I can go to Chase and say "give me my fucking money" and they'll give me sweet cold, hard dirty fiat dollars with, in general, no questions asked. I deposited in dollars, my account balance is denoted in…

You try it - try to get more than 10,000 USD cash out of your bank, and then tell me how sweet that fiat money is (much less doing this without any questions asked). This is not to send out the ridiculous trope of “fractional reserve banking is a fraud” or anything; Chase, for the moment, is solvent, and recent events have made it clear that the Federal Reserve will sooner barbecue children than let a bank customer n…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. Regulators to Subpoena Crypto Exchange Bitfinex, Tether

#370

Post by cstejerean »

Nition wrote: post #284
jandrese wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing the auditors weren't happy with "out of thin air" when they asked where the the backing currency came from. The Tether folks were like "Our balance sheet is really simple! We just add numbers to this column until it evens out, what's the problem?!?" and the auditors are like "that's just fraud".

It's ridiculous; surely they could have made tons of money with USDT legally if they'd just been less greedy: - Create Tether out of thin air - Sell it to people for $1USD each - Put that USD in a bank account to earn interest Hell, there's probably still an opening for someone else to do it right. - Create MyTetheredCrypto out of thin air - Convince people & exchanges to accept it ??? - Sell it for $1USD each - Unli…

I'm pretty sure they did try to do this legally, but then they lost the ability to actually send and receive USD from the US. If you tried to do the same thing you'd run into the same problem. If the effective point of your tether is to allow exchanges to avoid enforcing anti-money-laundering controls and skirting legislation requiring them to be properly registered in the states they do business, then good luck finding any US bank that will work with you once they figure this out (either to hold your account if you are US based or to transfer money to and from your international bank if you're international).

So what likely started out as a legitimate operation probably found it impossible to continue that way once it could no longer easily exchange tether for USD. So the options were probably to shut down or keep operating "untethered" and basically have a free money printer.

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