The other issue is that usdt has zero privacy! Which is why I'm waiting for xUSD from https://havenprotocol.org/knowledge/
. This brings a suite of stable coins, protected by Monero grade privacy!
Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?
231–240 of 492 posts
Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tether is more like a money market fund. It has much worse disclosure and much less stringent regulations than money market funds. Money market funds are 100% backed
> Money market funds are 100% backed This is a meaningless statement unless they have actual, physical dollar bills stacked in a warehouse backing the fund. And even then, it would be a lie: counter-party risk even applies to physical stacks of dollar bills (they can be stolen).
You misunderstood. I wasn’t saying money market funds are invulnerable. Failure of the Reserve Primary Fund caused the worst of the Great Financial Crisis.
I was saying 100% backing is the standard they’re regulated too and they published their backing in a very detailed way that anyone can check.
Tether doesn’t do this. They refuse to disclose their counterparties and they defined their own accounting standards where junk debt is valued at redemption value rather than market value
Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
The automotive industry is 100+ years old whilst Bitcoin is only 13 years old, so you can't fairly compare them on the basis of "who would notice". My previous skepticism of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency was due to short-sightedness. You almost have to dip your toes in, in order to understand its potential.
Okay, use the web. Within a couple of years of its creation it had transformed businesses in all kinds of industries, government, education, recreational activities, etc. By the time it was as old as Bitcoin, the world was completely different and people were walking around with web clients in their pockets; in contrast, the most impact Bitcoin has had outside of its own community seems to be that it can be slightly…
I'm going to disagree with your timescale, mainly in the use of 'web' rather than 'internet'. The 'internet', which set the foundation for the 'web' started its existence in the 70's, and the 'web' wasn't really invented until the late 80's / early 90's.
Memory of time passing seemingly gets very compressed the further back you go.
Additionally, Bitcoin is an attempt at disrupting elements of the financial world (and cryptocurrencies as-a-whole are going after ALL of finance, not just elements of it). This is _the most powerful and well-funded aspect of modern civilisation_, so there's going to be severe resistance (to put it mildly) to any threat.
It's also difficult to understand the concepts that are foundational to cryptocurrencies, and the average persons eyes glaze over (personal terminology my wife uses when I try to explain technologically difficult things that she really has no interest in) at the slightest dip into its technicalities.
Better examples may be smart phones, but mobiles have been around since the mid-80's at least (that suitcase-sized portable phone in Lethal Weapon), and laptops are of a similar vintage (my argument being that smart phones are a combination of these two existing technologies).
Smart phones also have that immediate-dopamine-hit working for their adoption rate whilst Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are a 'longer game' (arguably you could say those already on the 'inside' for crypto get the dopamine hit of profit or potential riches - rightly or wrongly, healthily or otherwise).
Think of cryptocurrency as building a brand new Central Banking and Wall Street infrastructure. 13 years is still breast-feeding against that behemoth.
Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?
#234Earlier 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…
Yeah but where do they run to? I could see dark money having to run into BTC and ETH because real dollar redemption is a problem if you operate out of China for example.
A run means “run on the bank” where you go to Circle and ask to trade in your USDC for dollars.
Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of note, Tether values their reserves at redemption value. So if they have a loan to an insolvent company that trades at 25 cents to the dollar, Tether’s attestation values it at 100%. See emphasis of matter, page 2 of their attestation https://tether.to/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/tether_assuranc...
That’s such an insane, non-GAAP way to value fixed income securities. Almost boggles the mind
It really is. I wish more was made of it. No one has asked Tether to comment publicly, that I know of.
It’s a loophole you can drive a truck through.
Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
I never knew one of Trendons minions copied Bitcoinica and started BitFinex, thanks HN
I sat in chat rooms with most of these crazy fucknuts a decade ago and that is frightening.
Fun re reading old court transcripts yay
Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?
#237I dont understand why this is so big though. Surely few people own tether long term. Ie you use it to buy crypto, not sell your crypto and hold thether. I can imagine traders buy and sell a lot but that wouldn't add to tens of billions.
Another strange phenomenon is that the supply of tether never seems to decrease. It only ever increases or stays stable. Maybe the odd 0.1% decrease here and there.
Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
It took Liberty Reserve 7 years and 17 countries cooperating to get nuked from orbit. Tether was founded as Realcoin in 2014 by a group including former child star and accused sex offender Brock Pierce, so while it’s technically just rounding the 7 year mark, it didn’t begin in earnest until it was taken over by Bitfinex towards 2015 and didn’t become majorly problematic until 2016/2017 according to the NYAG findings…
> by a group including former child star and accused sex offender This makes your argument seem conspiracy-theory-esque, despite your links having some quality information. That quote is more akin to clickbait than it is a valid point in your argument.
Every other crypto investment seems to be run by someone with past criminal convictions, accusations of sexual misconduct, or shady past. I have somehow been able to avoid all of this in my own career without much effort.
It speaks volumes that this is the kind of characters interested in this space.
Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plenty of cryptocurrency enthusiasts read HN, and some might flag negative press.
I think most actual cryptocurrency enthusiasts dislike Tether.
Most of the cryptocurrency enthusiasts I have ever met only care about price increases and speculation. Which is why they don't like nasty Tether news getting any views.
Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?
#240I don't understand how Tether has survived this long. Bitfinex and Tether sure look transparently like a fraud, all the way back to the "no really we have $1 in the bank for every Tether but you can't audit us" days. And yet it continues to occupy its role as the underpinning of most cryptocurrency markets. Why hasn't it blown up yet? My best guess is that it's useful to everyone taking in money from new retail inves…
It's very easy to short tether, it costs around 4-5% a year.
You can do it directly on FTX, or you can do it on ethereum by borrowing tether on aave against, say, USDC, and then selling it for USDC.
You can do this in significant size, 8 figures+ if you'd like.