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Tether executives said to face criminal probe into bank fraud

bloomberg.com

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Re: Tether executives said to face criminal probe into bank fraud

#81

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #55
jonahbenton wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason this happens is that the bar for proving criminal intent on the part of a corporation- which would lead to jail for executives and could lead to dissolution of the corp- is very very high. Getting the evidence related to "mindset" and linking it to action and doing so in a way that sufficiently resists various defense strategies is almost impossible, and extremely expensive and time consuming to litigate.…

So what I’m hearing is, governments world prefer criminal enterprises stay in business so long as they get a cut of profits via settlements

I think it's more just that the government doesn't want to blow 100 mil trying to litigate a case they have almost no chance of winning in some reasonable amount of time. Government lawyers are almost always out-gunned in cases like this.

Re: Tether executives said to face criminal probe into bank fraud

#82

Post by graeme »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #75
spookthesunset wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or more likely tether isn’t backed by anything at all. The auditor they hired quit before completing their audit. Seems legit to me. These dudes are a complete scam but as long as BTC goes to the moon nobody seems to care.

Given that you're not allowed to redeem tether for dollars I never quite understood why it mattered. edit: Note the difference between "trade" for dollars and "redeem" for dollars

The whales can redeem, in minimum chunks of $100,000. Mostly these are exchanges. Thus the peg is supported by the reserves in a roundabout way.

If Tether can’t redeem, and trades break the peg, then ultimately either exchanges go insolves or anyone holding tether has to write off their holdings. Or both.

Re: Tether executives said to face criminal probe into bank fraud

#83

Post by phpnode »

swang wrote: post #76
phpnode wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any rational person can see that Tether poses an existential risk to the crypto economy - but the market is highly irrational. There was an interview with tether's CTO and GC the other day that was an absolute car crash[0] and should be sounding deafening warning bells for anyone invested in crypto, but instead we see the BTC price shoot up by 15% in the days since it aired. It is utter madness. [0] https://www.youtu…

it is because binance got transferred a whole bunch of tether and also created a whole bunch of its own stablecoin right before that huge spike last night. its not irrational, it is just pure fraud.

it can be both!

Re: Tether executives said to face criminal probe into bank fraud

#84

Post by Kalium »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #78

As someone who doesn't really care about the virtues of crypto, but has a small investment in btc that has grown into several thousand dollars, I'm feeling that if I want some casual investment in crypto I should move it into eth to avoid regulatory risk from bitcoin's environmental cost and tether collapsing and destroying bitcoin's value. I'm sure eth would tumble down with btc for a while but feel it might diverge…

If your goal is to avoid regulatory risk, you might consider taking seriously the possibility of avoiding cryptocurrencies entirely.

Re: Tether executives said to face criminal probe into bank fraud

#85

Post by bathtub365 »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #80
pwned1 wrote: post #10

An interesting primer on Tether, and whether it is a scam: https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/what-effect-would-tether-be... (Yes, I know it's zerohedge, but this is a decent article) Tether usually has 2-3x the volume of bitcoin in any given day. And no one seems to know anything about how it works. So in my estimation, it probably is a scam...

USD is the real scam. It's not backed by anything either. Tether only exists because nobody else wants to touch the USD and its annoying regulations. I find it hard to care about Tether printing billions when the US government prints trillions. Wish we could have a 100% XMR world without even a single dollar in sight. Won't happen until the end of the petrodollar which won't happen until the end of the US military.

I think are at least a couple hundred million people who use USD.

Re: Tether executives said to face criminal probe into bank fraud

#86

Post by dcolkitt »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #78

As someone who doesn't really care about the virtues of crypto, but has a small investment in btc that has grown into several thousand dollars, I'm feeling that if I want some casual investment in crypto I should move it into eth to avoid regulatory risk from bitcoin's environmental cost and tether collapsing and destroying bitcoin's value. I'm sure eth would tumble down with btc for a while but feel it might diverge…

Ehhh. I'm pretty close to an Ethereum maximalist, but I'd actually say ETH is more at risk than BTC for these types of downside risks.

For one BTC is just bigger with more people widely invested in it, and more name recognition. That's going to constrain government action from interest groups and the public perception of overreach. If Biden announced tomorrow that he was going to "shut down Bitcoin", a lot of conservatives, and even moderates, would have a knee jerk opposing reaction. If he said he was going to "shut down Ethereum", most people would be like "what the hell is Ethereum?"

Two, Ethereum's smart contract system allows a lot more shenanigans. Remember, Tether runs on top of Ethereum, not Bitcoin. As does almost all of DeFi, which is starting to piss off financial regulations. Bitcoin doesn't come with all the baggage attached. 99% of it is just people transferring Bitcoin to one another. That makes its systematic risks pretty self-contained.

Re: Tether executives said to face criminal probe into bank fraud

#87

Post by xur17 »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #78

As someone who doesn't really care about the virtues of crypto, but has a small investment in btc that has grown into several thousand dollars, I'm feeling that if I want some casual investment in crypto I should move it into eth to avoid regulatory risk from bitcoin's environmental cost and tether collapsing and destroying bitcoin's value. I'm sure eth would tumble down with btc for a while but feel it might diverge…

I'm not sure ETH would be any better protected from tether's collapse. If anything it might be more affected since a fair number of defi projects use it.

Re: Tether executives said to face criminal probe into bank fraud

#88

Post by ancientworldnow »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #78

As someone who doesn't really care about the virtues of crypto, but has a small investment in btc that has grown into several thousand dollars, I'm feeling that if I want some casual investment in crypto I should move it into eth to avoid regulatory risk from bitcoin's environmental cost and tether collapsing and destroying bitcoin's value. I'm sure eth would tumble down with btc for a while but feel it might diverge…

Tether likely impacts eth as much if not more than Bitcoin considering it 1) runs on Eth and 2) Eth tends to be the financial product crypto of which tether is the largest element.

Re: Tether executives said to face criminal probe into bank fraud

#89

Post by [deleted] »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #78

As someone who doesn't really care about the virtues of crypto, but has a small investment in btc that has grown into several thousand dollars, I'm feeling that if I want some casual investment in crypto I should move it into eth to avoid regulatory risk from bitcoin's environmental cost and tether collapsing and destroying bitcoin's value. I'm sure eth would tumble down with btc for a while but feel it might diverge…

[deleted]

Re: Tether executives said to face criminal probe into bank fraud

#90

Post by Fiahil »

fergie wrote: post #12

Some smart crypto people are saying that if Tether goes down it will take a whole load of other crypto down with it.

If I were holding any Tether, articles like this would probably push me to buy btc or eth with it, then transfer it out of exchange reach. I would, then, consider moving it back to USD only when the dust settle.

From that point of view, it's easy to imagine why a tether collapse would temporarily push crypto prices up - not down.

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