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Crypto Market Roiled by New Allegations Against Tether, Bitfinex

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Re: Crypto Market Roiled by New Allegations Against Tether, Bitfinex

#261

Post by rocqua »

conanbatt wrote: post #234
marvinalone wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USD is backed (among other things) by the government accepting taxes in it. If you don't pay, they will come to your house with guns and take you away. This creates a demand for USD that is completely unlike any demand for crypto.

Again this weird argument. If the USD were valued due to its tax-demand, raising taxes would increase the value of the dollar! Also the gov creates more supply to the dollar than the tax demand always, so its not really clear. And most taxation is a percentage of income or value measured in dollars itself. This argument never clicked for me: where is it coming from?

The argument is not that this is controls the USD value. Instead, the argument is that this gives an intrinsic base value to the USD. This base value means people have some reason to hold USD, which causes them to make other transactions in USD. The actual current value from USD comes from the other transactions, but that is not intrinsic to USD. Instead, it is an emergent property.

The intrinsic value of USD is consoling, because it prevents the value of USD dropping to 0, hence there will always be a possibility of the emergent value reappearing.

Re: Crypto Market Roiled by New Allegations Against Tether, Bitfinex

#263

Post by b1daly »

bhaak wrote: post #242
dragonwriter wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But from this, it looks like Bitfinex was completely amateur hour, and that—but for Tether being raided to cover the results of that—Tether might not have been a scam at all.

Yes, that's the surprising bit. Tether USD backing seems to have been fine. But Bitfinex screwed up, I guess partly due to panicking because they couldn't get a proper bank connection. It also seems that the money is lost, just not accessible, at least at the moment.

Ah, no. These people are shady AF. They intermingle funds and shuffle them around behind the scenes. This whole system is a black box surrounded a tower of cards.

Not accesible, that’s a good one.

Re: Crypto Market Roiled by New Allegations Against Tether, Bitfinex

#264

Post by reitzensteinm »

askmike wrote: post #251
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it still trades 1:1 to USD today On exchanges of questionably integrity. And where it is impossible to reliably short the instrument.

You mean Kraken? There are many OTC lending markets that allow for tether shorting.

Seems like counterparty risk would make this a bad trade; if Tether collapses, the whole system is likely to follow.

Re: Crypto Market Roiled by New Allegations Against Tether, Bitfinex

#265

Post by wtdata »

patio11 wrote: post #10
berbec wrote: post #3

Is this a surprise to anyone? I was under the impression that even the most ardent HODL-er thought Tether was, at best, a very risky investment, and more likely a total scam.

This is pretty big news; the entire cryptocurrency economy relies on tethers being valued at par, given that they're how billions of dollars of liquidity are denominated. While rumors and suppositions about Tether have swirled for quite some time, that was also true of Mt. Gox before the fall, and those of us who have been saying loudly that they're insolvent have not been widely believed.

Sincerely, but if they were completely backed up and valued at par, they wouldn't call it theter, they would just be using USD.

Re: Crypto Market Roiled by New Allegations Against Tether, Bitfinex

#266

Post by jakal »

Scoundreller wrote: post #163
arcticfox wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious who these Merlin and Oz fellows are, does anyone know more about them?

This may be 100% unrelated/wrong: Check out "OZ49 Corporation". It has some shared directors with some other Panama crypto companies, and a director name Oz: https://opencorporates.com/companies/pa/155664811

no its not. It is Ozzie Joseph

https://graphcommons.com/graphs/cf637f7f-8eef-43fa-94a3-f861...

Re: Crypto Market Roiled by New Allegations Against Tether, Bitfinex

#267

Post by 55555 »

So, let me get this straight...

Crypto Capital has claimed that the money is frozen and that's why they can't send it back. Execs at Bitfinex/Tether believe maybe Crypto Capital's principal, Ivan Lee, has stolen it and that's why he won't send it back. The NY AG contacted Portugese and Polish authorities and, from them, was informed that there were no official orders freezing Crypto Capital bank accounts in those countries. So the most likely scenario by far is that Ivan Lee has stolen the money.

The NY AG then files a civil lawsuit against Bitfinex, and in doing so reveals to Ivan Lee that the US government is aware that he has stolen the money.

But he (Ivan) has not yet been arrested. So now we have a guy who has committed a massive crime and who is comfortable with tax havens and living internationally and corrupting institutions and who has been given a fair warning to go into hiding before he inevitably is indicted. Oh, and he has $850,000,000. Doesn't he sound like, idk, a flight risk? If he flees, regardless of iFinex's failure to disclose the suspected loss to investors, gross negligance on behalf of the NY AG may contribute to investors losing $850 MM.

Why wouldn't they criminally charge the guy who they strongly imply has actually stolen the money first before they file a civil suit against the victims* dumb enough to send it to him? (* This is called VAF - Victim Assisted Fraud)

There's a lot of angles from which to look at this. Bitfinex/Tether are shady, no doubt. But if the NY AG actually believes what they are purporting to, this stands out to me as a bizarre choice.

Re: Crypto Market Roiled by New Allegations Against Tether, Bitfinex

#268

Post by stzup7 »

55555 wrote: post #267

So, let me get this straight... Crypto Capital has claimed that the money is frozen and that's why they can't send it back. Execs at Bitfinex/Tether believe maybe Crypto Capital's principal, Ivan Lee, has stolen it and that's why he won't send it back. The NY AG contacted Portugese and Polish authorities and, from them, was informed that there were no official orders freezing Crypto Capital bank accounts in those cou…

"The NY AG contacted Portugese and Polish authorities and, from them, was informed that there were no official orders freezing Crypto Capital bank accounts in those countries"

I've read the 24 pages report and missed that part, could you quote it please?

To me, the whole thing looks like this: "Hey Bitfinex, you can't keep running your operations when you're missing 800M. We know that, because we're the one who seized that money from you"

Re: Crypto Market Roiled by New Allegations Against Tether, Bitfinex

#269

Post by kacamak »

berbec wrote: post #3

Is this a surprise to anyone? I was under the impression that even the most ardent HODL-er thought Tether was, at best, a very risky investment, and more likely a total scam.

Most people willingly ignored this because they feared that panic and a'bank run' on tether would cause a crash similar to Mt.Gox.

Tether is infact a fed instead of the fed, but without the largest military power in the world to defend it, a scam that is backed by nothing and there have been a lot of attempts to point that out. Check out 'bitfinexed' on twitter and medium.

Re: Crypto Market Roiled by New Allegations Against Tether, Bitfinex

#270

Post by stzup7 »

village-idiot wrote: post #166
danaos wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only a small fraction of the 120k bitcoins stolen at the time though. It may be a coincidence.

Allegedly stolen.

? The FBI collaborates on the investigation and even returned them some funds they were able to seize a few months ago.
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