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Approx. 24 hours ago, Tether printed 1B $USDT out of thin air

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Re: Approx. 24 hours ago, Tether printed 1B $USDT out of thin air

#121
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relative scarcity is a necessity for any currency.

Of course but you could give people some free money nevertheless and it would make the world a better place. What do you think would happen if you gave 1000 dollars to each person in America every month? I think a lot of good would come from that and not much bad.

Where did it came from? From taxes? Then ok, it probably would work.

Now if it came out of thin air, right from the printing presses, a whole lotta hurt of inflation

Re: Approx. 24 hours ago, Tether printed 1B $USDT out of thin air

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one has seen any of their collateral or knows how much of it they actually have. I believe the finance people call this being over-leveraged but I'm not an expert. Seems kinda weird that the SEC hasn't looked into it.

I think the SEC would have to first establish it as a security, no? It’s currently in a legs grey area.

I don't know. I'm not an expert but seems like there should be some institution that figures out whether financial games like stablecoins are actually economically beneficial and whether they should be regulated in some way or other.

Re: Approx. 24 hours ago, Tether printed 1B $USDT out of thin air

#123

I’m not saying tether is fully backed (I think it’s been admitted they’re not), but do people not understand how it even ostensibly works? When people sell other crypto for tether/USDC, they are essentially “buying” tether/USDC. Which tether and circle “print” out of thin air… but ostensibly back by selling the other crypto they just received for real dollars. With the huge crash, a lot of people were selling their c…

>When people sell other crypto for tether/USDC, they are essentially “buying” tether/USDC. Which tether and circle “print” out of thin air… but ostensibly back by selling the other crypto they just received for real dollars.

You're missing the previous links in the chain. When you sell your crypto at an exchange, your counterparty isn't the exchange, it's another person who wants to buy crypto. Therefore you making the trade doesn't cause new USDT to be printed. That happens before the trade, when your counterparty made the deposit.

Money flowing into the cryptocurrency ecosystem causes tethers to be printed; money flowing out causes it to be destroyed. If people were all simultaneously cashing out (on net), it would stand to reason that tethers be destroyed, not issued.

Re: Approx. 24 hours ago, Tether printed 1B $USDT out of thin air

#124

Every time there's a tether story here, the inevitable discussion of fraudulent activity comes up because Tether seems like an outright scam. I'm inclined to believe all that from what I've read and however little I can make sense of. However, I can't really tell how this ends. They seem confident that there will be no repercussions to minting money out of thin air and, so far, they've been right. Eventually, that's…

They seem confident that there will be no repercussions to minting money out of thin air and, so far, they've been right.

Tether and bitcoin have been very robust, bitcoin has crashed and recovered many times now. But I have to say that every single bubble has involved the statement "so far, they've been right." as the follow-up to "this time things are different".

Re: Approx. 24 hours ago, Tether printed 1B $USDT out of thin air

#125

Every time there's a tether story here, the inevitable discussion of fraudulent activity comes up because Tether seems like an outright scam. I'm inclined to believe all that from what I've read and however little I can make sense of. However, I can't really tell how this ends. They seem confident that there will be no repercussions to minting money out of thin air and, so far, they've been right. Eventually, that's…

" They seem confident that there will be no repercussions to minting money out of thin air and, so far, they've been right." For the most part the crypto market being unregulated means that there can't be any consequences, except for market consequences. And market consequences are vaaaaastly worse. It's basically like having no one make you wear a seat belt. Sure seems fine until you're just dead.

It's still a great deal for the perpetrators to only make 1MM in liquid capital after defrauding billions. Non-market consequences of theft include jail time and forefeiture of funds outside of an LLC.

Re: Approx. 24 hours ago, Tether printed 1B $USDT out of thin air

#126

Every time there's a tether story here, the inevitable discussion of fraudulent activity comes up because Tether seems like an outright scam. I'm inclined to believe all that from what I've read and however little I can make sense of. However, I can't really tell how this ends. They seem confident that there will be no repercussions to minting money out of thin air and, so far, they've been right. Eventually, that's…

Beyond the fraud allegations, the idea that an organisation can just print extra money as they see fit, doesn’t that go against the principles of crypto finance? I am genuinely curious why people think that is a sustainable idea.

Tether claims that they are not printing money. Whether they follow their own rules is disputed, but there are rules.

Re: Approx. 24 hours ago, Tether printed 1B $USDT out of thin air

#127

Every time there's a tether story here, the inevitable discussion of fraudulent activity comes up because Tether seems like an outright scam. I'm inclined to believe all that from what I've read and however little I can make sense of. However, I can't really tell how this ends. They seem confident that there will be no repercussions to minting money out of thin air and, so far, they've been right. Eventually, that's…

Right now I think a good analogy is it's like musical chairs. The game is fine as long as the music is playing. When the music stops, someone's gonna lose big.

The problem is when the music stops and there's a run on crypto. People are trying to get out of $USDT and convert it into cash. Exchanges have to have buyers of $USDT so they can exchange $USDT back into cash for anyone that wants to. But they can't just create dollars out of thin air. If there's no buyers for $USDT anymore than the "currency" flatlines, it's no longer tied to the dollar.

If Tether were truly backed 1:1, Tether itself could just buy $USDT with its own cash on any exchange, and that would be enough to keep their currency afloat and stop the run.

Re: Approx. 24 hours ago, Tether printed 1B $USDT out of thin air

#128
post #111

Regarding this "print": https://twitter.com/paoloardoino/status/1467504705857335302?... "PSA: 1B USDt inventory replenish on Tron Network. Note this is a authorized but not issued transaction, meaning that this amount will be used as inventory for next period issuance requests and chain swaps." The tether CTO routinely comments on these seemingly large moves because people get very worked up about them. Why does teth…

> Why does tether seem to bring out the tinfoil theories from people that have absolutely 0 background in finance or crypto market structure or econ in general.

Hilarious. People with backgrounds in finance are for the most part the group of people that have made an issue about this, myself included.

But more curiously, I'm not even sure what you're attempting to to convey with this comment? Do you think that a background in finance, or econ, is necessary to understand the incredibly simple business that Tether operates, and the even simpler reasons of why it is likely problematic (if not an outright fraud)?

Re: Approx. 24 hours ago, Tether printed 1B $USDT out of thin air

#129
post #27

So what happens if the owner of that billion attempts to convert one thousand into USD?

They never will. There is no liquidity. How many crypto people have cashed out all of their money? The scam is to build up this community of people who are convinced that the USD is going to be worthless in the future and that crypto is going to be only way of buying things in the future. Like Maddof there is no end game, just keep telling people that their gains exist and that they are idiots if they cash out, forever.

Re: Approx. 24 hours ago, Tether printed 1B $USDT out of thin air

#130
post #119
post #111

Regarding this "print": https://twitter.com/paoloardoino/status/1467504705857335302?... "PSA: 1B USDt inventory replenish on Tron Network. Note this is a authorized but not issued transaction, meaning that this amount will be used as inventory for next period issuance requests and chain swaps." The tether CTO routinely comments on these seemingly large moves because people get very worked up about them. Why does teth…

Tether could allay these concerns by getting audited and cleaning up all the investigations against them.

> cleaning up all the investigations against them

This makes it pretty obvious that you're not arguing in good faith. I guess you would have given Steven Hatfill or Wen Ho Lee the same advice?

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