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Tether executives said to face criminal probe into bank fraud

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

#271

Post by yadaeno »

arcticbull wrote: post #191
leppr wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Roughly speaking nobody has tried to redeem any - for obvious reasons. They know they can't. Usually you at least come up with FUD that sounds reasonable to an outsider. Obviously many people (some that I know personally) have "redeemed" USDT for a USD wire via Tether. Tether may be fraudulent but it wouldn't have held up until now without some aspect of credibility. There are many 8 figures+ redemptions going on,…

> Obviously many people (some that I know personally) have "redeemed" USDT for a USD wire from Tether. Tether may be fraudulent but it wouldn't have held up until now without some aspect of credibility. There are many 8 figures+ redemptions going on, sometimes multiple times a day. I have not seen a single piece of evidence of this, and I have not seen any burns to line up with this. If you'd like to provide some I'l…

Bitfinex was able to do this because they are owned by the same individuals as the people who own teather.

800m is still a drop in the bucket compared to the 64billion issued tether.

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

#272

Post by yokem55 »

tracedddd wrote: post #113
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…

DeFi, generally on Ethereum, would be severely impacted from a Tether fallout. Curve’s largest pool, which is the basis for a lot of yield in other services, can be drained to zero if Tether has even a minor sustained depeg. Tether backed loans at a variety of services would likely default sending liquidation events across all the major tokens on Uniswap and Sushi. Bitcoin wouldn’t do great but it is insulated from a…

There is less of a liquidation risk regarding tether precisely because the major lending protocols (Maker, AAVE, Compound) do not let you use tether as collateral. You can deposit it to lend to others. And borrow it against other assets. But you cannot directly borrow against USDT as collateral.

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

#273

Post by TimJRobinson »

user-the-name wrote: post #142
santamex wrote: post #79

This one explains the Tether scam quite nice: https://youtu.be/-whuXHSL1Pg Edit: summary: 8 people founding the tether company, 7 of them with a criminal background. Lying and denying and then admitting after they have no other option. Yeah, seems like a nice company…

Tether's business at this point is basically manufacturing red flags. It is incredible the mental gymnastics people in the cryptocurrency business go through to defend this group of crooks.

I've been in crypto for a while and never met anyone who likes Tether, it seems to be novices that use it that don't know any better. I don't know why anyone would use it over a decentralized stablecoin like DAI.

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

#274

Post by perl4ever »

Clewza313 wrote: post #6
rib3ye wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you survey the commercial paper sector?

This has been widely reported, see eg Matt Levine's recent take: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-07-22/privat...

This is great:

"“Given our portfolio composition in commercial paper, we believe that it is quite important to respect the privacy of the banking partners that we work with.” That’s not a thing! That’s not a thing at all! Every money-market fund just lists all of its holdings, by size and issuer and CUSIP! Tether has broken new ground in the concept of commercial-paper privacy rights!"

...

"Tether has traded between $0.9996 and $1.0009 over the last seven days, including during yesterday’s interview. That’s a pretty tight range given that, you know, anyone can watch the interview."

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

#275

Post by TimJRobinson »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #265
deepvibrations wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure - some problems being solved right now: What problems does DeFi solve? There are a few straightforward ones when looking at financial systems - Inefficiency - Banks and financial institutions spend billions on opex (ex. BoA spent $53 billion on SG&A and occupancy/equipment in 2020). Well written protocols and decentralized trust can increase efficiency and collapse this number Permissioned access - For better or…

But they don't really solve any of that. That are inefficient too, slow and costly. 51% was possible from China anytime until they banned it. Insane workarounds are proposed for easy problems. Instead of the SEC, some sharks/influencers are ruling the markets. Not a week goes bye without a new hack or malicious ownership of the cloud solution or an on purpose malicious contract or extreme scams ( eg. Tether, USDT, ..…

It's pretty clear you haven't actually used DeFi. To convert my shares into dollars in my bank account takes almost a week. In DeFi I can do it within minutes. Same with sending money, trading, loans, providing liquidity, purchasing insurance. It's a night and day difference between this and the existing financial system.

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

#276

Post by CryptoPunk »

arcticbull wrote: post #245
CryptoPunk wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>They lost all access to banking meaning that there was no physical way for them to create redeem Tethers. Temporarily being unable to transfer USD to fulfill redemption requests is not the same thing as being unbacked. Having USD-denonimated commercial paper backing the tether is still having something of value backing it, which is in a different universe from tether being unbacked. People need to be more careful t…

They were also unable to receive deposits, and issued Tethers anyways. Ones they claimed on their website for years were backed 1:1 with dollars in a bank account they controlled. This is the substantiated fraud outlined in the settlement. The fraud was they said, on their website, for years, that they had 1 USD in their bank accounts as liquid currency for every USDT outstanding. They unequivocally did not - at nume…

>>This is the substantiated fraud outlined in the settlement.

That there is evidence of fraud does not justify making an unsubstantiated allegation that the tether was unbacked. No reasonable reading of "unbacked" would find it consistent with the tether being backed by USD-denominated commercial paper as opposed to USD.

I am not here to defend Tether, just careless language used when criticizing a party.

>>Finally re: commercial paper, I haven't seen a shred of evidence they own a single scrap of it.

That's an entirely fair statement. Like I said, I am not here to defend Tether. If anything, being careless with criticisms undermines the credibility of critics, and makes it harder for their salient arguments to be heard. So if you do have a good case against Tether, I'd suggest sticking only to the facts so that the case gets a fair shake.

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

#277

Post by arcticbull »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #276
arcticbull wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were also unable to receive deposits, and issued Tethers anyways. Ones they claimed on their website for years were backed 1:1 with dollars in a bank account they controlled. This is the substantiated fraud outlined in the settlement. The fraud was they said, on their website, for years, that they had 1 USD in their bank accounts as liquid currency for every USDT outstanding. They unequivocally did not - at nume…

>>This is the substantiated fraud outlined in the settlement. That there is evidence of fraud does not justify making an unsubstantiated allegation that the tether was unbacked. No reasonable reading of "unbacked" would find it consistent with the tether being backed by USD-denominated commercial paper as opposed to USD. I am not here to defend Tether, just careless language used when criticizing a party. >>Finally r…

For the record I do see what you're saying about my choice of language. I personally see my reading in line with that of CNBC and in line with the wording in the settlement - although I can certainly choose to hold myself to a higher or at the very least a more conservative standard. Thanks for keeping the conversation honest and grounded :) and thanks for clarifying your position.

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

#278

Post by WalterSear »

TimJRobinson wrote: post #273
user-the-name wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tether's business at this point is basically manufacturing red flags. It is incredible the mental gymnastics people in the cryptocurrency business go through to defend this group of crooks.

I've been in crypto for a while and never met anyone who likes Tether, it seems to be novices that use it that don't know any better. I don't know why anyone would use it over a decentralized stablecoin like DAI.

The entire crypto market is poisoned by this. There is no hiding from it in another currency if the market loses 70% of it's liquidity.

"All this is extremely dangerous to everyone, the entire crypto community

BTC could go to 1k if we don't act fast"

• CFO of Bitfinex & Tether, previously during a Tether crisis.

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

#279

Post by CryptoPunk »

arcticbull wrote: post #277
CryptoPunk wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>This is the substantiated fraud outlined in the settlement. That there is evidence of fraud does not justify making an unsubstantiated allegation that the tether was unbacked. No reasonable reading of "unbacked" would find it consistent with the tether being backed by USD-denominated commercial paper as opposed to USD. I am not here to defend Tether, just careless language used when criticizing a party. >>Finally r…

For the record I do see what you're saying about my choice of language. I personally see my reading in line with that of CNBC and in line with the wording in the settlement - although I can certainly choose to hold myself to a higher or at the very least a more conservative standard. Thanks for keeping the conversation honest and grounded :) and thanks for clarifying your position.

My pleasure and thank you for keeping an open mind and showing civility.

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

#280

Post by dzamo_norton »

fleddr wrote: post #217
rvz wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So in my estimation, it probably is a scam... It IS a scam and it is backed by nothing. Only to pump the BTC price artificially. The unveiling of this scam was seen and covered a mile away and was a long time coming. To Downvoters: I'm sorry BTC maximalists, but this scandal was waiting to be cracked down and no, it is not FUD, or whatever denial spiral you are going through. Just read: https://twitter.com/smdiehl/…

Whilst crypto maximalists can be annoying, there's also anti-crypto maximalists such as the source you're linking to. It is legitimate to raise the Tether concern yet he confidently drops into very binary conclusions driven by his pure hate for crypto. For example, his claim that it's 100% a scam whilst this fact isn't established. Or calling any trade in crypto "shady". This one shows his true colors. A huge amount…

> Or calling any trade in crypto "shady". This one shows his true colors. A huge amount of people just deposit dollars on a KYC exchange, then buy and sell whatever crypto they fancy.

> None of this is shady. It's fully legal, taxes are paid, it's like stocks. Yet according to him, any trade in crypto is shady.

True, there has been a lot of activity that was no worse than gambling. Let's tally up everything that's come out of the space, good and bad, and ask where it comes out on net. Somewhere in region of "a giant casino with a mad electricity bill on an island with no cops, teeming with scumbags who busy themselves with fleecing the innocent suckers in there desparate to come away with one of the lambos on stage". Yes, you pay tax on your winnings when you get back to the mainland.

> Or, the claim that the 800 billion market cap of Bitcoin is solely based on Tether. That's an absurd statement.

"800 billion market cap of Bitcoin" is already an absurd statement.

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