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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

#91

Post by rchaud »

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.

It is, though. It's backed by the economic output of the United States, which is transacted in USD.

But why are you conflating USD with crypto anyway? USD is a currency that is actually used for purchasing goods and services. Crypto isn't used for anything except speculation. If capital gains is the goal, then yes, the USD won't be of much value to you as it's not particularly volatile.

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

#92

Post by lawrenceyan »

Re: their recent settlement with the New York Attorney General - https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2021.02.17_-_settlemen...

> 3. The OAG finds that the conduct set forth herein violated the Martin Act and Executive Law § 63(12).

> 4. The OAG finds the relief and agreements contained in this Settlement Agreement appropriate and in the public interest. Therefore, the OAG is willing to accept this Settlement Agreement pursuant to Executive Law § 63(15), in lieu of commencing a statutory proceeding Page 2 of 17 for violations of the Martin Act and Executive Law § 63(12), based on the conduct described below.

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

#93

Post by cycrutchfield »

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.

Keep waiting, kiddo

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

#94

Post by dcolkitt »

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.

People said the same thing about Mt. Gox. Tether only represents 4% of the market cap in crypto. About the same fraction of the US stock market represented by Amazon.

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

#95

Post by bob33212 »

phpnode wrote: post #44
runbathtime wrote: post #33

What if Tether the company just throws in the towel? Take the reserves and run? What incentive do they have not too?

I don't think there really are any (or many) reserves. I think they just printed a bunch of tokens, used the tokens to buy BTC and to inflate the value of the crypto they hold in Bitfinex (Bitfinex and Tether are approximately the same company). If they throw in the towel they lose their ability to influence the crypto market which is where their actual gains come from.

That seems most likely. They thought that it doesn't matter if they back these tethers with BTC because BTC is a better investment than the UDS anyways. Once they went down that path they had no way of getting out other than printing more tether to prop up BTC when BTC dropped.

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

#96

Post by xur17 »

knownjorbist wrote: post #77
runbathtime wrote: post #33

What if Tether the company just throws in the towel? Take the reserves and run? What incentive do they have not too?

Can they even do that? What would that actually look like, from a technical perspective?

They would just stop redemptions. The existing supply would continue to exist on Ethereum and be tradeable, likely dropping in value due to the decreased confidence in it as an asset.

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

#97

Post by yellow_lead »

> In the course of its years-long investigation, the Justice Department has examined whether traders used Tether tokens to illegally drive up Bitcoin during an epic rally for cryptocurrencies in 2017.

But Bitcoin isn't a security. Is it illegal to manipulate it's price? Why haven't they looked at influencers pumping s*tcoins?

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

#98

Post by ElKrist »

graeme wrote: post #68
carrja99 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, if you move fictional dollars in the form of USDT to USDC then you are just shifting the imaginary amount around, it doesn't change the fact $61B is rendered worthless.

And that’s actually been happening. For week’s usdc’s biggest trading pair has been usdt. So some people are dumping usdt on usdc holders at 1:1 ratios. Why anyone holding usdc would exchange one for a usdt at par is a question I don’t have an answer to, but it’s happening en masse.

"Why anyone holding usdc would exchange one for a usdt..."

One possible explanation is that you have more pairs available for other cryptos with USDT than with USDC on some exchanges

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

#99

Post by jstx1 »

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…

The prices of all the top cryptocurrencies have been heavily correlated since the crash in early 2018. You aren't avoiding any of the risk by holding ETH instead of BTC.

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

#100

Post by matheusmoreira »

rchaud wrote: post #91
matheusmoreira wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is, though. It's backed by the economic output of the United States, which is transacted in USD. But why are you conflating USD with crypto anyway? USD is a currency that is actually used for purchasing goods and services. Crypto isn't used for anything except speculation. If capital gains is the goal, then yes, the USD won't be of much value to you as it's not particularly volatile.

https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages...

> Federal Reserve notes are not redeemable in gold, silver or any other commodity, and receive no backing by anything

Bigger scam than Tether. Has been running for almost a century now.

> Crypto isn't used for anything except speculation.

Looks like Amazon's going to accept cryptocurrency as payment:

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-cryptocurrency-seeks-...

Hopefully we'll be able to put this "cryptocurrency is just speculation" argument to rest soon.

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