Live data from Hacker News

Tether minted most USDT to just 2 firms – Alameda and Cumberland

protos.com

101–110 of 211 posts

Re: Tether minted most USDT to just 2 firms – Alameda and Cumberland

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It amazes me that more people don't read the Tether ToS and run away.

Tether volume has stagnated compared to other stablecoins like USDC

Tether is still growing, and I think you meant to say "supply growth" rather than volume. Tether is still, by far, the most traded "cryptocurrency" asset. It's traded about 2x more than Bitcoin.

Re: Tether minted most USDT to just 2 firms – Alameda and Cumberland

#102
post #55
post #3

There are a lot of areas of crypto where I feel like I have a pretty good understanding, but I genuinely don't understand why anyone would "invest" in a stablecoin. What advantage does holding something like USDT offer over simply putting dollars in a bank account?

DAI offers some ~2% APY on coinbase, that's much more than my saving account!

For substantially more risk…

Re: Tether minted most USDT to just 2 firms – Alameda and Cumberland

#103
post #29

I often find the headlines, and even stories about, crypto to be inscrutable to those looking in from the outside. The stories also seem to come from an ecosystem of sites I don't recognize so it's hard to even judge if it's reputable site (or at least guess at the biases it might have). None of this is inherently bad, but there seems to be a growing divide between "mainstream" tech and the crypto world that is harde…

As far as I’m able to discern, the value prop to investors pouring money into “smart contracts” is just that they’re unregulated.

Re: Tether minted most USDT to just 2 firms – Alameda and Cumberland

#104
post #76
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is minting to a few companies proof of fraud?

Because we know that Alameda and Cumberland do not, on the whole, possess $63 trillion in USD. That's the official number of "outstanding Tether" posted on the Tether website [0]. If these allegations are true, the other holders of Tether total a couple million, meaning Alameda and Cumberland together must have trillions of holdings. Which, based on filings, we know isn't what they're reporting. [0] https://wallet.te…

[deleted]

Re: Tether minted most USDT to just 2 firms – Alameda and Cumberland

#105
post #29

I often find the headlines, and even stories about, crypto to be inscrutable to those looking in from the outside. The stories also seem to come from an ecosystem of sites I don't recognize so it's hard to even judge if it's reputable site (or at least guess at the biases it might have). None of this is inherently bad, but there seems to be a growing divide between "mainstream" tech and the crypto world that is harde…

If you’re technical, read Mastering Bitcoin and Mastering Ethereum, both for free on GitHub https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook, and https://learnmeabitcoin.com/technical/

Reason being is that how most of crypto works is a derivative of bitcoin or ethereum. And, it’s fairly normal in a technical sense, just applied in a unique way that needs to be understood via good ref doc.

Once you wrap your head around those two anchor protocols and get a sense of how it relates to its comp sci primitives (file systems, p2p, cryptographic certs), it can be really demystified - ie “blockchain” is stored as blocks on a file system, in the comp sci sense.

Re: Tether minted most USDT to just 2 firms – Alameda and Cumberland

#106
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, Tether might be a scam in the sense that they don't actually have the backing assets they claim but that doesn't invalidate the rest of the market or the trades done with them any more than your bank having They are absolutely running afoul of banking regulations but that's not exactly catastrophic for the whole market. Unless there's a bank run the only thing Tether actually needs to do is keep the trading val…

It's all fine and good until there is a run on tether and they can't actually give customers their money back. They will throttle customer withdrawals, the issue will be magnified, and I would guess tethers would be selling for pennies on the dollar on the secondary market.

Yup. https://tether.to/legal/

> Tether reserves the right to delay the redemption or withdrawal of Tether Tokens if such delay is necessitated by the illiquidity or unavailability or loss of any Reserves held by Tether to back the Tether Tokens, and Tether reserves the right to redeem Tether Tokens by in-kind redemptions of securities and other assets held in the Reserves. Tether makes no representations or warranties about whether Tether Tokens that may be traded on the Site may be traded on the Site at any point in the future, if at all.

Re: Tether minted most USDT to just 2 firms – Alameda and Cumberland

#107
post #29

I often find the headlines, and even stories about, crypto to be inscrutable to those looking in from the outside. The stories also seem to come from an ecosystem of sites I don't recognize so it's hard to even judge if it's reputable site (or at least guess at the biases it might have). None of this is inherently bad, but there seems to be a growing divide between "mainstream" tech and the crypto world that is harde…

As far as I’m able to discern, the value prop to investors pouring money into “smart contracts” is just that they’re unregulated.

smart contracts are just bits of functional code

I don't know that I'd invest in a deployed smart contract but I suppose it depends on the traffic and the situation of the developer

it wouldn't be hard for the original developer to deploy a competing contract

Re: Tether minted most USDT to just 2 firms – Alameda and Cumberland

#108
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tether might be a scam in the sense that they don't actually have the backing assets they claim Tether is a scam on a whole other level than this

But like how? I get why the SEC might have words for Tether the company but I don't get how users of tether have been scammed. You buy coin at around $1 and sell at around $1. Like from an end-user perspective as long as the thing actually functions as a stablecoin for some time interval you care about what else is there?

You can sell around $1 as long as people believe it's worth $1, which it's not, so there's no guarantee they will continue to believe it forever. It's supposed to have enough backing to actually represent a $1 which would mean that faith wouldn't be part of the equation, but that's not the actual situation.

Re: Tether minted most USDT to just 2 firms – Alameda and Cumberland

#109

I'm no Tether apologist, but this doesn't seem like an issue to me? Alameda and Cumberland are the 2 biggest liquidity providers in crypto trading. Tether is the source of liquidity for many of the exchanges that they trade on. So of course they'd use Tether to on-ramp into the crypto ecosystem and trade. I suppose the real news here is that Alameda and Cumberland haven't redeemed much Tether (proportionally), so if…

hmm no OTC traders here?

When you call the OTC desk and wire them dollars they mint stablecoins using their account with - presumably - Bitfinex. Bitfinex issues Tethers no different than Coinbase/Circle issues USDC in a just in time transaction.

You either receive the Tether you asked for to make your own trades, or they keep the Tether and purchase the crypto you really wanted. In either scenario, someone besides the OTC has the Tether now.

There is no reason to use custodial exchanges for your fiat onramps. They put you at a major disadvantage in speed.

It is strange that this is to be the smoking gun for people against Tether. These kind of juvenile inexperienced arguments (seen in other comments) are why more serious scrutiny of Tether takes so long, because its mixed up with all this benign stuff put in front of regulators who have a huge learning curve already.

Re: Tether minted most USDT to just 2 firms – Alameda and Cumberland

#110
post #60

If it wasn't obvious from the get go that Tether was a scam, what more do you need.

And a very large chunk of BTC’s value has come from Tether buys.

Could you clarify why this should concern me as a BTC holder? As I understand, Tether buys come in two cohorts:

1. Retail/Institutional USD/other --> Tether --> BTC

2. {over-minted/under-reserved Tether} --> BTC

I dont see 1 as a problem, as Tether is just a conduit for the actual transaction. I can see the issue in 2, but is that an issue any longer given the current scrutiny?

Post reply on HN