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Tether: The Story So Far

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Re: Tether: The Story So Far

#181

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M »

Incredible reporting, more so for being written by patio11 in his copious spare time as opposed to a crack team of journos at the WSJ or something.

There's one thing I don't understand though: if Tether is off-the-charts risky & illiquid if/when push comes to shove, you'd expect there to be a divergence in the price between BTC priced in Tether (on exchanges like Bitfinex, where you're screwed if Tether implodes) and BTC prices in USD (on comparatively reputable exchanges like Coinbase). Yet there isn't: http://www.untether.space/

Are arbitrageurs picking up pennies in front of the steam roller? Or is there something else happening here?

Re: Tether: The Story So Far

#182

Post by vosper »

rolltiide wrote: post #80
falcolas wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of your use cases involve anonymity. Crypto currencies don’t provide anonymity. Sure it’s not directly tied to your name and address, but it’s quite possible to make that tie. Such cases are on the news fairly frequently.

the other open secret is that you just create a new identity in an isolated sub namespace you ring fence all the addresses in that space with Monero over VPN or TOR: Monero swapped to Bitcoin, Monero swapped to Ether, Monero swapped to Tether (ERC20/OMNI/TRC20), a general balance in Monero since merchants accept that too, and transact there. Swap back out to Monero if you need a withdrawal. Pencil pushers can track a…

> Monero swapped to Bitcoin, Monero swapped to Ether, Monero swapped to Tether

Is there a way to do this without going through some central exchange? I thought I'd read that (eg) Shapeshift was now doing KYC/AML checks, so would you still get identified there?

Re: Tether: The Story So Far

#183

Post by RandomBacon »

pietjepuk88 wrote: post #160
lawn wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cryptocurrencies aren't anonymous. Monero is. > They also don't eliminate payment processor risk Of course they don't magically solve all problems, but that doesn't make them useless. > I'm skeptical how many people in Venezuela saved their fortunes via Bitcoin et al I've read some article from people who did it, but I don't think it's common. The problem with leaving the country is, how do you take your assets wit…

Monero is unfortunately not really anonymous either in many common scenario's, like repeatedly sending payments to or from the same address. [0] It's definitely better than Bitcoin though, but far from anonymous. Overall I think that cryptocurrencies (and the internet overall) could use some better privacy strategies. Tor-like routing, no possibility of finger printing, etc. [0] https://slideslive.com/38911785/satosh…

The first sentence of reference [0] is incorrect.

> Many, including Satoshi, believed cryptocurrencies provided privacy for payments.

(emphasis mine)

Satoshi's writings indicated that he understood the public ledger he was creating was not anonymous. He even talked about ring signatures as a possible method to add obfuscation.

(Ring signatures is one aspect combined with others that Monero uses to achieve financial privacy. Anonymity requires extra steps taken by the user. Financial privacy ≠ anonymity.)

Re: Tether: The Story So Far

#184

Post by RandomBacon »

esotericn wrote: post #117
falcolas wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of your use cases involve anonymity. Crypto currencies don’t provide anonymity. Sure it’s not directly tied to your name and address, but it’s quite possible to make that tie. Such cases are on the news fairly frequently.

It doesn't matter whether most people's use cases are "truly" anonymous or not, because not everyone who makes an anonymous payment is the kingpin of a human trafficking ring who will actually have large amounts of resources brought to bear on them. People use burner phones to get drugs for nights out. Theoretically none of this is really anonymous, you're pinging cell towers, you're probably on CCTV, etc etc. But re…

> Monero which might have claim to be truly untraceable

They haven't. The developers are very upfront about its limitations.

Re: Tether: The Story So Far

#185

Post by arcticbull »

bko wrote: post #154
Geee wrote: post #138

Isn't it curious that he writes a lengthy post about frauds made possible with the current banking system (trust-based reserve) and then doesn't find any use for cryptocurrency? This is exactly the reason why Bitcoin was invented; its supply is mathematical and can't be over-inflated. Satoshi even included the criticism in the Bitcoin's Genesis block: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for b…

> Obviously Tether (or any private stablecoin like Libra) is even worse than a regulated fiat currency, and should be strictly illegal. Having a system of tokens that serve as an IOU to a stable basket of goods should be illegal? That's essentially how banks work, you give them money, they give you an IOU. I imagine a stable coin could be designed with enough proofs and audits to give you certainty. I think a well ad…

The only reason people use tether is to avoid AML/KYC. It's why the other stable-coins from "legitimate" sellers like Coinbases' USDC aren't used by anyone for anything. If I just wanted "electronic dollars" dollars I'd just fire up my web banking portal. The only value it provides is crime. Yes, it should be illegal. In fact it probably is.

Re: Tether: The Story So Far

#186

Post by matthewbauer »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #181

Incredible reporting, more so for being written by patio11 in his copious spare time as opposed to a crack team of journos at the WSJ or something. There's one thing I don't understand though: if Tether is off-the-charts risky & illiquid if/when push comes to shove, you'd expect there to be a divergence in the price between BTC priced in Tether (on exchanges like Bitfinex, where you're screwed if Tether implodes) and…

Perhaps Bitfinex is padding reported tether trades to make it look less risky?

Re: Tether: The Story So Far

#187

Post by wp381640 »

tptacek wrote: post #112
lawn wrote: post #70

> I have looked, quite a bit. I have not found a good use case yet I'm always surprised that intelligent and knowledgeable people claim this. You haven't even found a single use case? You don't think buying a VPN anonymously is a good use case? Or see the need for uncensorable donations? (Remember how the U.S. shut down Wikileak's PayPal donations when they exposed their war crimes?) Or that cryptocurrencies allow bu…

You respond twice downthread that while Bitcoin may not be anonymous, Monero is. Do you then concede that anonymous payments are not a major use case for the non-anonymous Bitcoin protocol? Why then is Bitcoin so valuable?

Bitcoin is valuable because people value it. If you need anonimity you mix your coins - almost every darknet market (likely bitcoin's largest transactional use case) explains how to do this

Probably the easiest way is Samourai Wallet

https://samouraiwallet.com/

Re: Tether: The Story So Far

#188

Post by H8crilA »

YawningAngel wrote: post #163
H8crilA wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3. Because you cannot actually just park billions of dollars in the national reserve bank and collect interest on it. Actually you can, it's called Interest On Excess Reserves (IOER) in the US, which has been the only short term rate enforcement mechanism of the FED since the crisis days. Till that whole repo thing happened, just recently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_reserves The rest is true though.

The Fed is not obligated to allow you to open an account, and in such a case it very likely would not allow such a thing: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-08/the-fe...

I meant it does allow banks to do it. And from what I've read banks can arrange a FED deposit for a non-bank, charging a few bps of profit for the service.

Also you can always just buy short term treasuries. There's even an ETF for that ($BIL) which charges 14 bps.

But yeah no chance that a big "fuck compliance" scheme like Tether could easily pull it off.

Re: Tether: The Story So Far

#189

Post by gamblor956 »

logicx24 wrote: post #111
skywhopper wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrencies aren't anonymous. They also don't eliminate payment processor risk: fraudulent exchanges, hackers, and your own mistakes can all lose or lock you out of your money. And generally there's far less legal recourse when that happens with crypto. I'm skeptical how many people in Venezuela saved their fortunes via Bitcoin et al, but if you have some data on that, I'd be curious to hear about it. In particu…

A more common case for preserving wealth on emigration is actually South Africa. Many reasonably prosperous South Africans that emigrated used Bitcoin to bypass SA's strict capital flight restrictions.

I deal with SARS pretty regularly and I'd like to know where you heard that since you're describing tax evasion. The kind of tax evasion that is covered by extradition treaties in most countries....
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