Live data from Hacker News

Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

bloomberg.com

161–170 of 492 posts

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#161
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the problem is...they have no wealth. They may have low paying jobs or even two jobs. Or a reasonable job yet high debts or living expenses. Barely getting by, with no prospect of ever building up more meaningful wealth. It's super cool that their 5K turns into 6K in 10 years time, but that doesn't do anything. You might as well turn it into 100K. Or lose it all. Fuck it. I don't think you understand the dire s…

> It's super cool that their 5K turns into 6K in 10 years time Ok, I get it. You’ve not actually looked at what other investments are like. 20% return over 10 years? The S&P 500 is on track to do that this year, after one of the biggest rallies in history last year. $5k invested just before the covid collapse would still be worth far more than $6k, and that’s 18 months through a global pandemic. That said, your answe…

As much as I enjoy pissing on boomers, older home owners did nothing for their houses to appreciate. It's just something that happens due to monetary policy, low interest rates, local scarcity of supply and a growing population.

A lesser known reason is that since the 2008 crisis, hardly any new homes got built. Whilst the underlying demand was still in place, and growing.

"You can’t sell anyone a home for $485k if they can only get a $166k mortgage"

You only need enough buyers that can afford a 485K mortgage to meet supply. So when supply is very low (which in my country is very much true), if only 25% of the potential buyers can afford that mortgage it's still enough to buy the supply. Which they do, and they even overbid still.

So this can keep going for a long while. Not even a crash solves it. Our 2008 crash dropped prices by 20% only. Which is now the gain in a single year.

So that leaves the only other option you mention: wages.

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#162

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).

How did you learn this stuff?

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#164
post #2

The article talks about Tether's issued coins making it as large as one of the top 50 US banks (if it were a bank). How many banks does the US have?

At the rate they're going if you compare their holdings to revenue (not particularly accurate, but I'm going for an analogue to try to represent relative size), they're on track to eclipse Alphabet, AT&T and even Saudi Aramco by the end of the year.

Apple, Microsoft, Google, Verizon Communications and Pfizer COMBINED hold $400B in reserves.

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#165

I find it ironic that people seem intent on holding Tether to a much higher standard than banks. I know there are certain legal guarantees applied to banks along with regulations, but all evidence points to Tether being in a much safer position than banks with their tiny fractional reserves. People are dissatisfied with anything less than fully-backed when it comes to 'crypto'.

Ironic how? Isn't it crypto people who constantly talk about how neanderthal the banking system is and how crypto is "Banking, Evolved"? Shouldn't that imply a higher standard.

> People are dissatisfied with anything less than fully-backed when it comes to 'crypto'.

If banks these days failed (or their founders, friends, "hackers" ran off with the contents of the "vault") with the same frequency as crypto providers and exchanges, they would too.

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#166
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, and live life to the fullest. Are we exchanging cliches now?

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#167

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).

How did you learn this stuff?

Career hedge fund trader for the trading stuff.

Twitter for the Tether stuff (Bitfinexd, Bennett Tomlin, Cas Piancey, Doomberg, David Gerard, and a few others).

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#168
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the event Tether busts, the entire crypto markets will freeze up, and it’s plausible usdc will not be redeemable or face a run. USDC aren’t dollars and have been opaque about their backing. The bulk of their assets are in “cash and cash equivalents” which sound good, except they include less than 90 day commercial paper here! They also don’t state its quality or say how much of their cash/equivalents are CP rather…

It’s called leverage. Every player in the financial system uses it; some have cut deals with the government to socialize catastrophic losses so we pretend the leverage doesn’t exist but there it is. As long as Coinbase allows on-demand redemptions nobody is going to care about an audit because it’s trivially easy to just convert all your USDC to real dollars almost immediately. Can’t say the same for Tether.

> As long as Coinbase allows on-demand redemptions nobody is going to care about an audit because it’s trivially easy to just convert all your USDC to real dollars almost immediately.

And what happens if Coinbase were unable to convert all the USDC because the demand exceeded their stockpile of USD?

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#169
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When lambo is a joke. The entire space is riddled with memes and jokes. You shouldn't take it so serious.

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#170
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Ok, fair. What I mean is high leverage, which is the fuel for the type of manipulation I’m referring to. Why does that make a difference? And how is it any more coherent to talk about margin "coming to" DEX? The moment anyone can borrow on margin, it has "come to" DEX. You keep speaking with a mental model of DEX that doesn't jibe with reality, like they're walled gardens rather than platforms open to anyone with li…

> If that's what you meant, then it's coming from the same dubious mental model I complained about above It’s not, because I’m saying something different than you think I am. > when you enter into a liquidity pool, you are providing liquidity to the entire cryptocurrency's network, not just people who are "on" that DEX (which isn't a coherent concept). Um, what?!? I’m really not sure you understand how this works. Wh…

>>LPs are not something you have to "be in";

>Uh, if you’re not in it, then you’re not providing liquidity.

Why did you cut off the rest of that sentence, which clarifies that I was referring to traders not having to be in an LP to accept an offer (sorry, "remove liquidity")?

People who really have some deep, coherent insight don't have to resort to that.

Furthermore, the point was that, even though you provide liquidity "to" a liquidity pool, that liquidity is available to the entire cryptocurrency's market, so "being in" the LP isn't a meaningful concept (with respect to whether you can buy from it -- though you'll still probably cut this off).

>I’m saying something different than you think I am.

The great thing about a discussion forum is that you can point to specifically where someone misinterpreted what you said and correct it. If you're just going to assert that someone totally misinterpreted you, but never clarify what you claim that deep insight was, then I'm not sure what you think you're adding to the conversation.

>Um, what?!? I’m really not sure you understand how this works. What do you think it means to be an LP?

It means that a) you have locked up tokens in the pool, and b) you receive a fraction of the fees when someone trades with it. You're still working from the (incorrect) mental model that thinks a DeFi LP is some walled off garden. This is in error. The LP is available to trade with everyone using that cryptocurrency's blockchain. So it's not very meaningful to speak of traders who can't trade with you because they're not "in" "your" LP. Once your liquidity is in any LP, everyone can access it. You do not need to provide it to more than one pool, as your premise requires.

Post reply on HN