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Tether: The Story So Far

kalzumeus.com

21–30 of 241 posts

Re: Tether: The Story So Far

#21
post #15

Your daily reminder that you can short Tether if you want. All these people writing these articles, and the freely moving market price hovers right around 1:1. Funny how when people are asked to bet, despite the fact that there's almost no risk of loss for shorting it, their convictions disappear.

[deleted]

Re: Tether: The Story So Far

#22
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested if you think there's anywhere I make a strong claim without appropriately strong evidence. There are a lot of strong claims, but I'm justifiably confident of them. Many of them are cited inline.

It is more about the general "conspiracy" tone of the article. It is like "OMG banks can create money, what a conspiracy" by some people who are surprised by the facts on how financial system works when they finally learn some basics. There is strong demand for any kind of vehicle which allows transferring value digitally outside of the traditional banking system. I don't think tether users trust tether because they…

“I trust it because I need it and there are no alternatives” is not a compelling argument. It’s literal wishful thinking.

Re: Tether: The Story So Far

#23
> The dominant use case for cryptocurrency is speculation. Speculators want to put value into the system, somehow have it become greater, and then take more value out of the system than they put in.

Don't forget that another relevant use case is anonimized payments. Let's say you deal with weapons. A good crypto could help. Let's say you sell porn videos: in some cases, one wants to pay with crypto because they don't want their SO to find out.

Just like speculation: it's not always an ethical thing. I'm just saying it's a usecase (quite matter of factly / detached from emotion).

For me though, there's only cryptokitties <3

Re: Tether: The Story So Far

#24
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where can you sell Tether short in a market that's not controlled by these same unscrupulous manipulators? Shorting makes sense in regulated public markets with plenty of liquidity. Cryptocurrencies aren't like that.

Kraken trades USD/USDT directly and will let you short.

Kraken's owners have ties with/overlap with Tether's owners.

There is no wholly or even just meaningfully independent platform on which you can actually short Tether.

Re: Tether: The Story So Far

#25
post #14

"Players in the crypto ecosystem will be shocked, shocked to know it got this bad, this quickly, but this has been an open secret for over a year." ---- I'm not entirely in agreement the crypto world will be shocked tether is insolvent. As long the the fiat gateways exist to exit the system with gains intact, most could care less about tether. It's musical chairs.

Yeah, people have been saying that the Tether stuff is super shady and just waiting for the bubble to pop for the better part of 3 years. It's very much been an open secret.

Re: Tether: The Story So Far

#26
post #15

Your daily reminder that you can short Tether if you want. All these people writing these articles, and the freely moving market price hovers right around 1:1. Funny how when people are asked to bet, despite the fact that there's almost no risk of loss for shorting it, their convictions disappear.

As explained in the post, you have to bite off very high levels of counterparty risk to short. Cryptocurrency exchanges die in something like 20% of exchange-years, and your estimate of an exchange dying _contingent on me being right_ should be biased towards the high side if they are exposed to the risks of using tether.

This is a subplot of the Big Short, and cost several groups of the protagonists a lot of money: they were so right about their prediction regarding the housing market that e.g. the banks who had brokered their swaps might have gone under, which would have impeded their ability to get paid. (There are several variants of the same thing discussed; the book is marginally clearer than the movie about them.)

Re: Tether: The Story So Far

#27
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tether has gigantic red flags including not being able to actually exchange it for dollars even though it is pegged to dollars. It's so brazen it's hard to even believe it.

Fractional reserve banking has the same problem, yet provides a real, functional purpose for finance. Tether has a purpose - to be a savings account is not that purpose.

You can exchange your bank savings account for dollars (or Euro, or whatever).

Hundreds of millions of people do this every day around the world without issue, because this is a solved problem.

Re: Tether: The Story So Far

#28
Cryptocurrencies are a religion. I find the idea that anyone would want to hold a large amount of any currency idle for a long period of time baffling. Yet this is the premise that so many people who are speculating in cryptocurrency "investments" have bought into. Then you add on top of that terrible user experience, slow transaction times, and lack of any theft protection and I don't understand why any sane person doesn't just bail on the idea entirely.

Re: Tether: The Story So Far

#29
post #15

Your daily reminder that you can short Tether if you want. All these people writing these articles, and the freely moving market price hovers right around 1:1. Funny how when people are asked to bet, despite the fact that there's almost no risk of loss for shorting it, their convictions disappear.

People love to say this but it’s simply wrong. You can believe something is actually worth anything but not believe the market will realize this over a given time period.

E.g. a time traveler might see tether go to $0 in the year 2025. But if he is stuck in the year 2019... shorting it in the short term is clearly a dumb idea. Betting that you can have a chair when the music stops is similarly dumb to to betting you can guess when the music stops altogether. Both fools know the music will stop eventually. Both will likely lose.

Re: Tether: The Story So Far

#30
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tether has gigantic red flags including not being able to actually exchange it for dollars even though it is pegged to dollars. It's so brazen it's hard to even believe it.

I'm not advocating for tether. But it is not a ponzi scheme. And I think that most of the users understand what tether is - they are not excepting returns, they also understand that it is unregulated vehicle where the backing can disappear any time if the issuers get into trouble. I would guess biggest use-case is moving fiat between exchanges without having compliance issues, which you would have with banks.

It does fill a need, and no one expects returns from it, but it most likely is fractionally reserved by btc. This means that if the price of btc drops too low and too many people cash out then it's over, because each tether cashed out will mean more and more btc are required.
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