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Bitfinex and Tether required to end all trading activity with New Yorkers

ag.ny.gov

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Re: Bitfinex and Tether required to end all trading activity with New Yorkers

#251

Post by xur17 »

ketamine__ wrote: post #250
devoutsalsa wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stocks prices get negatively impacted by rising interest rates. With interest rates at ~0%, there's little money to be made in bonds, savings accounts, or anything that pays interest income, so people put money into stocks w/ the hope the stocks will go up. When interest rates go up to fight inflation, there's more incentive to put money into bond markets, which means there's not as much money going into stocks, whic…

The returns you can make in securities over ten to twenty years is much more impressive than bonds.

Key word being "can". On average securities have a much better return than bonds, but they also have a much higher risk of a large drop in value.

Re: Bitfinex and Tether required to end all trading activity with New Yorkers

#252

Post by xur17 »

deanmoriarty wrote: post #178
devoutsalsa wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stocks prices get negatively impacted by rising interest rates. With interest rates at ~0%, there's little money to be made in bonds, savings accounts, or anything that pays interest income, so people put money into stocks w/ the hope the stocks will go up. When interest rates go up to fight inflation, there's more incentive to put money into bond markets, which means there's not as much money going into stocks, whic…

What’s your recommendation for least-worse inflation hedge?

It depends on how much downside risk you are okay with taking. If you want something relatively cash like, ibonds are an interesting option - their rate of return is updated to the latest inflation measurement every 6 months.

If you are okay taking on some risk, a mix of stocks and bonds seems sensible to me.

Re: Bitfinex and Tether required to end all trading activity with New Yorkers

#253

Post by ivalm »

prewett wrote: post #204
deanmoriarty wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s your recommendation for least-worse inflation hedge?

Land is the typical recommendation. A noisy crowd thinks gold is a good hedge. Personally, I think that high quality companies with pricing power should retain their value; Coca-Cola and Apple can probably increase their prices to compensate for inflation, leading to increased earnings, leading to increased stock price (the increase compensating for inflation).

Land and stock have the issue of being inversely related to interest rates and interest rates do rise with inflation.

Re: Bitfinex and Tether required to end all trading activity with New Yorkers

#254

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

question for HN.

If tether has been so successful at avoiding scrutiny while also making money, why is it that we don't see more tethers?

It seems like a very easy way to make money.. given the authorities are asleep at the wheel ?

Re: Bitfinex and Tether required to end all trading activity with New Yorkers

#255

Post by rglullis »

CarelessExpert wrote: post #200
kenneth wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same doubts you do about Tether's legitimacy, but there's a few conclusions I believe you're jumping to which I think don't quite hold: - Tether's volumes being greater than other crypto-currencies don't have much impact on the legitimacy of other crypto-currencies. The volume is so high because USDT is the other side of most crypto-currency trading pair. Given the liquidity of the market, you can trade al…

> Even if everything alleged were true, it really wouldn't be a drop in the bucket compared to the kind of shenanigans central banks have been pulling for centuries. If the crypto-currency market is illegitimate due to money printing by Tether, then so is the conventional financial system due to quantitive easing by the Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world. Man, I find it endlessly amusing that cr…

Both your paragraphs are correct, yet each refers to different groups of people.

Re: Bitfinex and Tether required to end all trading activity with New Yorkers

#256

Post by Robotbeat »

kragen wrote: post #249
Robotbeat wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I grant Bitcoin has value as a hedge against system failure. And maybe you’re right about the corner case it addresses being larger than I think. But so much of the hype of Bitcoin is in developed countries with very low inflation. And this should be tempered.

But I'm not talking about system failure, primarily; I'm talking about day-to-day life for somewhere between one third and two thirds of people, most of whom aren't using Bitcoin yet.

Is it practical to use Bitcoin for day to day life for one to two thirds of people if the transaction fee is now $24? The Bitcoin blockchain itself is limited to 7 transactions per second. With 7 billion people using it, that mean each person doesn’t get one transaction per day, they get one transaction per billion seconds (over 31 years).

It’s useful for rare cross-border transactions for a small portion of the world’s population, I agree. But it cannot, in its current form, be used by one-third to two-thirds of people day to day. Even if you increased the block size 1000 fold (which is not necessarily very practical), you’re still only talking about one transaction a week.

So first layer blockchain Bitcoin simply isn’t going to be useful to most people for day to day operations. They’ll have to go through intermediaries or use higher layers (perhaps with more localized trust, etc). Which may be fine, but we should temper our expectations here of first layer Bitcoin.

Re: Bitfinex and Tether required to end all trading activity with New Yorkers

#257

Post by londons_explore »

FireBeyond wrote: post #233
celticninja wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also prefer to trust that source, however it is written as a press release. So they write it to make them look as positive as they can and stress the Bitfinex bad points. The blockcrypto article seems to indicate that the accounts were now balanced, but the ag.ny.gov makes no mention of it, which is expected if they are still trying to paint bitfinex as a wrongdoer, but calls into question their impartiality,…

> I would also prefer to trust that source, however it is written as a press release. So they write it to make them look as positive as they can and stress the Bitfinex bad points. Whereas theblockcrypto is quoting Bitfinex's counsel who is weasel wording over people's understanding of what a "finding" is at law? > The blockcrypto article seems to indicate that the accounts were now balanced Given that in 2019, Tethe…

I'm also very interested in the $18.5M number in the settlement...

It seems surprisingly small for someone who can't explain where $200M+ has gone to...

Re: Bitfinex and Tether required to end all trading activity with New Yorkers

#258

Post by UncleMeat »

nemo44x wrote: post #241
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is supremely ironic that we’re supposed to believe that the best way to escape money printing is to buy a cryptocurrency that was invented out of thin air, which is continuously mined (during most of our lifetimes) out of thin air by doing useless calculations. Or even worse, a basket of multiple crypto currencies, where the number of available crypto currencies and crypto assets grows larger every day.

BTC has been the #1 asset over the last 10 years. In many individual years it has out performed every other asset. It has this year by a large amount. At some point the dissenters will have to admit they were wrong. The reality is, BTC is here to stay and is a valuable hedge that is independent of any corporation, government, or central bank.

What does it mean to be wrong? Should I have mined 1000 coins in my CPU a decade ago? Duh. Does that mean that BTC is a useful financial hedge against inflation? Why would it? BTC went up by a factor of a gazillion during a decade when USD inflation was not out of the ordinary. Clearly something other than "inflation hedge" is driving the price.

Re: Bitfinex and Tether required to end all trading activity with New Yorkers

#259

Post by cdiddy2 »

cwhiz wrote: post #242
cdiddy2 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

where on earth are you seeing coinbase doing $210 billion daily volume? Coinbase has only done 94 billion of volume for the month of February so far monthly volumes by exchange: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/data/crypto-markets/spot/cryp...

I didn't say Coinbase was doing $210 billion 24h volume. I said Coinbase is reporting that Tether had $210 billion 24h volume. It's right there on the Coinbase tether page. https://www.coinbase.com/price/tether

ya that is wrong. not sure where coinbase is getting their data from.

keep in mind the total crypto market cap is 1.5 triilion. so tether alone doing 200b is an absurd statement. Total daily volume across all exchanges is only just getting to 50b these days

Re: Bitfinex and Tether required to end all trading activity with New Yorkers

#260

Post by carleverett »

FireBeyond wrote: post #203
kenneth wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same doubts you do about Tether's legitimacy, but there's a few conclusions I believe you're jumping to which I think don't quite hold: - Tether's volumes being greater than other crypto-currencies don't have much impact on the legitimacy of other crypto-currencies. The volume is so high because USDT is the other side of most crypto-currency trading pair. Given the liquidity of the market, you can trade al…

> - Even if everything alleged were true, it really wouldn't be a drop in the bucket compared to the kind of shenanigans central banks have been pulling for centuries. If the crypto-currency market is illegitimate due to money printing by Tether, then so is the conventional financial system due to quantitive easing by the Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world. Currently Tether is printing $3.5B wor…

Tether is using Deltec Bank and Trust in the Bahamas. Deltec's CEO actually did an interview where he responded to the Tether fraud claims: https://unchainedpodcast.com/is-tether-a-fraud-its-bank-says...

When Tether started, most financial institutions weren't open to working with cryptocurrency companies, but the fact that it's still the top stablecoin by value is troubling since there are plenty of better options now.

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