Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions? • Hacker News Board

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#101

Post by trident5000 » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 10:35 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #40

impostervt wrote: post #31

People have been yelling about Tether for years, myself included. But nothing seems to stop it. Not lawsuits, not major news articles. The conclusion I draw is that, yes, the game is rigged - AND EVERYONE IS OK WITH IT. As long as it's making everyone money, no one will really complain. What I also find interesting, is that if tether ever DOES crash, the result might be a big boost for Bitcoin. If you hold Tether, an…

Re your first claim it just takes time. Re your second claim, that’s a common misconception. The price of bitcoin would skyrocket against USDT but pancake against USD. Who in their right mind would sell their (actually worth USD) Bitcoin for your worthless Bahamian IOUs? Absolutely nobody. So you’ll see a massive skyrocket against USDT and as soon as people realize what’s going on, it’ll go no-bid. RIP. Then the ensu…

I think it would increase as tether would need to dump into btc on exchanges like bitfinex and most know this dynamic by now. But who even cares. If it craters like it did during covid from fear selling it just comes back in a month or so.

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#102

Post by headmelted » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 10:38 PM UTC

fleddr wrote: post #71

CPLX wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's another use case for those stocks. You can buy a whole bunch of them and then you get to run the company. If you buy enough GM stock eventually you can give all your friends and family members Corvettes for Christmas. Stock actually represents an enforceable claim on wealth that exists in the real world. Crypto not so much.

Both the typical stock holder and crypto holder see a number on screen and hope it goes up. That's it. Most stock trading is done by algorithms, not even people. A typical stock holder can never claim any underlying asset nor do they have voting rights, so you're really stretching. The difference is simply in risk appetite. People are going to keep drinking Coca Cola at large scale so owning their stock is low risk.…

“There’s a sizeable chance to lose your money but a larger chance to get returns that are astronomical”

Past performance is not indicative of future returns.

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#103

Post by qeternity » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 10:39 PM UTC

fleddr wrote: post #46

"Solana, up 9,801% in 2021 for seemingly no reason at all" No reason at all, huh? Anybody with even a remote interest in crypto knows why Solana has exploded. It's L1 season and Solana is a direct competitor to ETH, which suffers from high usage fees. Every other L1 has exploded in value. As said, L1 season. These kind of statements make me suspect the author never used crypto in their life. The cultural gap between…

> It's L1 season

You say this as if it’s a valid thesis outside of CT. Solana has exploded because Alameda, Cumberland and related VCs have made it so.

> Young people are locked out of any and all assets. They can't afford real estate or any meaningful amount of stock. Savings accounts have a negative yield.

Casually ignores Robinhood and equity markets, where most of any under 50s should have most of their wealth. Fixed income is a much bigger problem for old people than young people. Real estate, I will agree with you. But none of this justifies crypto.

The rest of your comment is truly bizarre. You’re defending it pretty strongly while also seemingly admitting that there’s little real economic value being created and that will result in a crash with people getting wiped out and starting over.

Why accept this? Why not focus on the real issues, instead of just accepting degen apeing with open arms?

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#104

Post by lebuffon » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 10:39 PM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #22

The biggest news, buried near the bottom: "After I returned to the U.S., I obtained a document showing a detailed account of Tether Holdings’ reserves. It said they include billions of dollars of short-term loans to large Chinese companies—something money-market funds avoid. And that was before one of the country’s largest property developers, China Evergrande Group, started to collapse. I also learned that Tether ha…

So they are doing banking, lending deposits at interest, without any regulation or oversight.

I think we know from history how that story ends.

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#105

Post by quickthrowman » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 10:40 PM UTC

qeternity wrote: post #92

jkhdigital wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You bring up a very important but often overlooked point about market panics: the problem is not really everyone rushing for the door, it is market makers pulling bid liquidity so that “normal” selling volumes tank the price (which triggers the avalanche).

What? Who told you this? Market makers, especially in crypto, do not have long holding periods. The big moves in crypto are because of coordinated manipulation to trigger stops and liquidations (forced, price insensitive buying and selling). I don’t know if this is /r/wsb leaking but markets do not tank because market makers pull back…that’s just not the business they are in.

If tether crashed I guarantee every MM would pull their bid, nobody wants to be left holding the bag. I don’t care if they’re obligated by contract to provide a bid/ask at all times—if USDT went bust, BTC/USDT liquidity would evaporate very quickly. The contract would be irrelevant since the exchange would die.

Either that, or their bid will be 0, like on 0DTE options that are far out of the money.

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#106

Post by headmelted » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 10:41 PM UTC

fleddr wrote: post #65

CPLX wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. The only use case is gambling. Unregulated gambling at that. The parent's comment's "For no reason at all except gambling " was implied and likely not confusing to the reader. Also happens to pretty clearly answer the question of why people have extremely serious concerns about all this.

A separate reply on the gambling part (my other reply is about utility). You're not listening. Crypto holders don't care about those concerns. They willingly gamble. You can ban and shut down all of crypto (in reality, you can't) and they'll move to meme stocks or betting on sports. You can't stop it or regulate it. Because it's a culture. It's an entire generation that is fucked anyway. Even the modest ambition of a…

Is it though?

A whole lot of talk about middle class lifestyles being out of reach in the same sentences as “WHEN LAMBO?”.

I’m sympathetic to the widespread lack of upward mobility these days. This is confusing it with something else.

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#107

Post by qeternity » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 10:43 PM UTC

quickthrowman wrote: post #105

qeternity wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Who told you this? Market makers, especially in crypto, do not have long holding periods. The big moves in crypto are because of coordinated manipulation to trigger stops and liquidations (forced, price insensitive buying and selling). I don’t know if this is /r/wsb leaking but markets do not tank because market makers pull back…that’s just not the business they are in.

If tether crashed I guarantee every MM would pull their bid, nobody wants to be left holding the bag. I don’t care if they’re obligated by contract to provide a bid/ask at all times—if USDT went bust, BTC/USDT liquidity would evaporate very quickly. The contract would be irrelevant since the exchange would die. Either that, or their bid will be 0, like on 0DTE options that are far out of the money.

Yes, I agree. But if all MMs withdrew but you had lots of other stickier liquidity, spreads might widen but it would cause a crash. Of course if Tether implodes, all the long term buyers will evaporate, which is my point: medium/long term price is dictate by swing and positional traders, not market makers.

> Either that, or their bid will be 0, like on 0DTE options that are far out of the money.

What? This doesn’t make any sense. 0dte options are often some of the most actively traded. But I’m not really sure you get this stuff.

Source: career hedge fund options trader

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#108

Post by cjensen » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 10:45 PM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #22

The biggest news, buried near the bottom: "After I returned to the U.S., I obtained a document showing a detailed account of Tether Holdings’ reserves. It said they include billions of dollars of short-term loans to large Chinese companies—something money-market funds avoid. And that was before one of the country’s largest property developers, China Evergrande Group, started to collapse. I also learned that Tether ha…

One dollar of Evergrande's debt -- that is, a promise to pay one dollar -- is not worth anywhere near a dollar. So besides the sketchiness of having lots of Chinese company paper on their "asset" books, there's the whole question of how they are valuing said paper.

In other words, when they say they have $1 dollar of assets for every $1 of issuance, is the asset an Evergrande promise to pay $1? Or is it an amount of stuff they can liquidate easily to obtain $1?

It's the former, of course. And the "auditors" they used checked and said "yep, they have the right amount of promises to pay from distressed Chinese companies that, if those companies actually pay, it will be enough money."

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#109

Post by qeternity » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 10:47 PM UTC

It seems to come up every time Tether is mentioned, so I will make a top level comment: do not short USDT/USD. You will not win. The only way you might (emphasis on might) short Tether is to be long off shore and short CME (I explain why in a comment further down).

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#110

Post by Imnimo » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 10:49 PM UTC

fleddr wrote: post #63

CPLX wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. The only use case is gambling. Unregulated gambling at that. The parent's comment's "For no reason at all except gambling " was implied and likely not confusing to the reader. Also happens to pretty clearly answer the question of why people have extremely serious concerns about all this.

If you've already made up your mind that crypto is a scam and gambling only, despite it being an enormous space, there's no point in asking. https://solana.com/ecosystem The above shows the 400 or so things built on top of solano. I would expect for most projects to not be very useful to the masses and likely most will fail. Which isn't different at all to the typical startup scene. I consider most of it garbage, and…

>They can decide to sell 10 copies, and dictate that if they are resold, the photographer gets a 20% royalty.

Suppose that I want to sell my copy, but do not want to pay the 20% royalty. What stops me from selling it for 1 cent on-chain, but buyer paying me real price off-chain? How can a creator realistically expect to receive their royalty cut?