331–340 of 517 posts
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> Then what is your explanation for why it is not possible to directly exchange USDT for USD, there must be a reason that no exchange wants to do that. https://global.bittrex.com/Market/Index?MarketName=USD-USDT
Do they process withdrawals in a reasonable time?
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Almost all fiat deposits into Bitfinex create USDT. Thats an additional fact that the amount is in line with the amounts that would be deposited into any big exchange. If Coinbase minted USDC whenever someone deposited, you would see the same kind of growth. The basis of your entire post is assuming impropriety based on pretty normal behavior with the addition of the business quirk of when USDT is created. The abilit…
If everything is fine and dandy with them why are they stopping trading in NY? Why is the AG claiming they lied about reserves, the one thing they really-really shouldn't have been? (Insert "you had one job" meme.)
The world toolset doesn't function under a “your either with us or against us” mentality, it functions as a gradient.
That gradient is that the NY AG case showed Tether was functioning properly until 2017/2018. If you were around crypto at that point in time, you would know that people would not have believed they had full reserves ever.
Just reread what I wrote. You are deciding to see advocacy for Tether which is not what I wrote at all.
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On top of that, any asset for which demand comes mostly from being an "inflation hedge" is a bad inflation hedge since prices will rise when people want more inflation hedging and drop when they want less hedging, meaning the majority of people inflation hedging will buy high and sell low. Gold has had that dynamic for a long time, which is one reason it is not considered a good investment most of the time. Buy asset…
Could that make such inflation hedges a good pre-inflation hedge? For example buying gold with the expectation that people will soon want more hedging than they do now, though this relies on getting in earlier than others.
The big question is to pick the optimal asset for hedging.
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I don't think there are any claims that Tether the organization itself is doing anything like that. They just print USDT and send it to people who are interested in buying USDT like exchanges. The two problems as I see them are: - Is USDT actually backed 1:1 by USD / cash equivalents as Tether claims? w/o independent audits we have no idea. So technically, if you hold USDT on an exchange and use it to trade alts and…
The settlement agreement shows that at multiple points Tether was not backed: https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2021.02.17_-_settlemen... I think the best case is tether printed usdt, used it to buy btc, inflated the btc price and is now fully backed by their btc holdings. This works as long as people want btc They were able to do it because people accepted usdt as dollars.
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On top of that, any asset for which demand comes mostly from being an "inflation hedge" is a bad inflation hedge since prices will rise when people want more inflation hedging and drop when they want less hedging, meaning the majority of people inflation hedging will buy high and sell low. Gold has had that dynamic for a long time, which is one reason it is not considered a good investment most of the time. Buy asset…
Could that make such inflation hedges a good pre-inflation hedge? For example buying gold with the expectation that people will soon want more hedging than they do now, though this relies on getting in earlier than others.
If I'm reading the settlement correctly, Bitfinex will now have even less USD to back Tethers, since they'll have to wire an $18,500,000 transfer to the State of New York.
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Almost all fiat deposits into Bitfinex create USDT. Thats an additional fact that the amount is in line with the amounts that would be deposited into any big exchange. If Coinbase minted USDC whenever someone deposited, you would see the same kind of growth. The basis of your entire post is assuming impropriety based on pretty normal behavior with the addition of the business quirk of when USDT is created. The abilit…
Is 'pretty normal business behavior' pretending two entities (bitfinex and Tether) are arms lengths entities with no relationship to each other to hide the conflict of interest, along with the provably lying about the actual backing of the coin, and using what were supposed to be customer trust funds to bail out what was supposed to be an explicitly stated unrelated business? If so - be aware those are felonies in ma…
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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 worl…
There's no reason BTC can't work the same way. With high transaction fees, maybe you'd withdraw once a month? The cost is annoying but it's still safer than having your savings in a shady banking system.
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It has? Bitcoin isn’t an alternative to the existing system for people. It might be a digital alternative to gold for people hedging inflation or in failed states, but its transaction fee is just way too high to be a practical alternative to anything but, like, wire transfers (Visa and ACH are WAY cheaper except for huge transfers... and Bitcoin isn’t particularly fast, either). And this high cost is driven by the fu…
If you live in a country with a highly functional banking system and no kleptocracy, Bitcoin is probably a bit puzzling unless you have family in Cuba. But it's not puzzling at all for those of us who live somewhere in the middle of the broad spectrum between Switzerland and Somalia, because most places have a little kleptocracy. Argentina is far from being "a failed state," but if you want to send US$500 abroad via…
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Buy all the non perishables, non obsoletables you're going to need for the next decade. Buy them in discounted bulk for and extra return. Bonus: capital gains tax free!
Solar panels, water filtration, and indoor farming!