Tether executives said to face criminal probe into bank fraud • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by fleddr » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 6:01 PM UTC

dzamo_norton wrote: post #280

fleddr wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

It doesn't work that way, you can't "tally up everything". If so, let's do that for humanity as a whole and conclude it's been a mistake.

Again, a huge part of crypto is perfectly legitimate, just retail buying/selling crypto via KYC exchanges. It's not lawless, just a free market of assets.

Which any individual can use or ignore as they see fit. You can use an investment strategy (buy and hold), trading/speculation strategy (minority of day traders) or indeed go the gambling route: super high risk bets using leverage.

Calling this entire spectrum consisting of hundreds of millions of users "gambling" is simplistic, binary thinking. Most crypto holders have less than 10K USD worth of holdings and rarely trade on it.

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

How so? Because you think it's worth less, or perhaps zero? If you're so super confident about that, short it. You'll get filthy rich whilst proving you're right.

But you won't short it, because you have no idea.

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

#292

Post by fleddr » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #264

fleddr wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

they're just called minimalists, vs. anti-maximalists, and announcing what someone who isn't you hates is a pretty unconvincing way of making your case, unless they've also announced that they "hate" it

I don't have a case to defend. I'm indifferent to people being pro or anti crypto. The only thing I did is to point out the agenda at work, and the limitations of the claims made: zero nuance, always hides from defending his case.

The guy hates crypto. A normal person would declare that and move on. He makes it his life work to hate crypto. He's consumed by it. That's anti-crypto maximalism.

A source to distrust as much as a pro maximimalist. Both have agendas set in stone, are not open to reason and nuance.

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

#293

Post by defaultprimate » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

dcolkitt wrote: post #203

defaultprimate wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about "market cap", which is a myth in the crypto space anyway: I made 1 billion of my proprietary tokens, and sold .001 to myself in another wallet for $1. Therefore my token's market cap is $1 trillion. I'm sure banks will let me buy a hundred million dollar mansion now since my net worth is verfiably gigantic. It's about cash "equivalent" in flow and out flow that tether/stable coins make up. Currently th…

Volume is not synonymous with flows. For example ~50% of US equity market volume is HFT. Yet this trading has virtually no impact on the large-scale direction of the market. That's because they don't accumulate sizable positions. Most of the volume is very high turnover, so there's no large aggregate impact. Similarly, most of crypto volume is Tether, because Tether is used to arbitrage between exchanges. Tether is a…

It's much cheaper/faster to use USDT because if you are the "in crowd" you don't have to actually pay and back it, and if you own/print it, you can wash trade to infinity with it.

The point is that the amount of money that supposedly exists in the crypto ecosystem (which is, at best zero sum, but really negative sum in most cases) is as imaginary as tether's backing.

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

#294

Post by rubyist5eva » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 6:30 PM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #236

rubyist5eva wrote: post #138

Cryptocurrency pegged to fiat is quite possibly the dumbest possible use of a cryptocurrency I can think of, except for Tether which was an obvious scam from the get go.

- Are you a merchant selling digital goods online and you want a zero-risk chance of dealing with chargebacks? You can accept stabletokens. No credit card fees as well. - Are you hodling a good amount of BTC/ETH/BAT tokens but you would like to get some liquidity, perhaps for a large purchase? Put your crypto as collateralized loan on MakerDAO, get DAI with very low interest and spend that: bonus point, if the crypto…

These are actually all very good points - thank you for sharing.

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

#295

Post by PhantomGremlin » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 8:31 PM UTC

h2odragon wrote: post #50

jellicle wrote: post #40

What Tether is doing is replaying the banking scams from the 1800s. A bank would open up, issue an unlimited amount of its paper currency, collect deposits in other, valuable currency, and operate for a while. Eventually it would collapse and the owners would walk away rich, having fleeced the public of a great deal of their money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat_banking US banking regulation is nearly weak eno…

Recall E-gold? Them folks were at least honestly nuts... I think they're all out of jail now.

I don't think they ever went to "jail" at all, just home detention. They convinced a Federal judge that “the intent was not there to engage in illegal conduct”.

Gold & Silver Reserve CEO Douglas Jackson was sentenced to 300 hours of community service, a $200 fine, and three years of supervision, including six months of electronically monitored home detention.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold#Resolution

It's Wikipedia, so it may not have been updated with all the relevant info.

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

#296

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 10:08 PM UTC

jasonlaramburu wrote: post #14

Edit: Isn't it a huge red flag that Tether doesn't make any money off transaction fees? Their daily volume is almost 2x that of BTC. They could fully support the company with a tiny transaction fee and avoid all the regulatory uncertainty/FUD. How does tether make money (aside from potential fraud)? Is there a transaction fee that supports the people and cost of running tether (the company)?

[deleted]

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

#297

Post by deepvibrations » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:32 AM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #244

deepvibrations wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree there is a lot of this in the space, but if you look past the laser eyes, there is some really awesome stuff happening in defi.

I don't disagree there's some cool technology, and in particular in the DeFi space - the problem is it's all fruit of the poison tree at the moment. It's all dependent on price action and the price action is dependent on Tether, on sketchy exchanges, on crime and criminality, on 125X leverage, on manipulation. And of course, there's so many problems with smart contracts - even the core idea of permanent, irrevocable…

Most major exchanges have reduced max leverage to 20x or less now. Regarding bugs, the space is still young, so of course there will be risks attached, even. more so when the space is innovating so quickly, but projects like Aave and Compound can be considered pretty safe now, with hundreds of millions value locked and have stood the test of time.

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

#298

Post by deepvibrations » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:36 AM UTC

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, ..…

OK, I can see you are just drawing conclusions without doing any real research, you have the opinions of someone who left crypto in 2017 and never looked at it since. I'm not going to bother wasting my time on you, but do advise anyone else reading this to look into the space and see some. of the great projects such as Helium Network HNT, Akash AKT or Aave.

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

#299

Post by NicoJuicy » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 4:21 AM UTC

deepvibrations wrote: post #298

NicoJuicy wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, ..…

OK, I can see you are just drawing conclusions without doing any real research, you have the opinions of someone who left crypto in 2017 and never looked at it since. I'm not going to bother wasting my time on you, but do advise anyone else reading this to look into the space and see some. of the great projects such as Helium Network HNT, Akash AKT or Aave.

> OK, I can see you are just drawing conclusions without doing any real research.

Do i need to remind you that you literally copy-pasted your "conclusion"?

You have given me no reason to proof me wrong.

Saying "do your research" is exactly the reason of my conclusion and answering with that statement is another way of saying: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Eg. Helium Network HNT - decentralized hotspots?

Like i said, nothing new. Decentralized mesh networks already exists and those solutions are inferior to an ISP forcing a hotspot option, existing options, esim or mobile hotspot.

It's absolute bs that their "Network Coverage" page only shows info about their Blockchain and price, not actual wifi coverage that is of interest for customers, lol.

https://explorer.helium.com/

This is how it should look like: https://fon.com/maps/

Masquerading their Blockchain as a product doesn't make it useful in real-life.

At least give something that is actually useful instead of "i don't know an answer, but check this and that".

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

#300

Post by NicoJuicy » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 4:31 AM UTC

wjohnsto wrote: post #175

eingaeKaiy8ujie wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DAI is not backed by USDT.

My fault, I meant USDC. DAI is backed by USDC, and USDC is a competing stablecoin to USDT. I guess an important distinction is DAI is not 100% backed by USDC, but it is backed >50% as of this time: https://share.streamlit.io/tadzz/maker_dai_collateralization...

Says who?

Tether was 100% backed by USD too, until the lawsuits.

Then it became 2,9% USD backed.