Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

whale-alert.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 271 posts

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

#161

Post by rglullis »

seibelj wrote: post #135
qeternity wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Circle has passed multiple audits. Circle has absolutely never been audited. Circle, like Tether, has published attestations, which do not remotely approach the thoroughness of an audit.

I worked at Circle. If you think that Jeremy Allaire is going to go to federal prison, you are out of your mind. Their combined in-house plus external legal teams are larger than 95% of the YC startup headcounts. The US government has been all over them for years.

As someone who worked at Circle, how comfortable would you be if you held a significant percentage of your savings as USDC? Same question, but for USDT, DAI and hard-cash-in-hand?

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

#162

Post by qeternity »

rglullis wrote: post #158
qeternity wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool. So you clearly have no idea what an attestation is, or why the fact that it's not an audit is so important. > Nonetheless, they have been done by independent third-parties who are a lot more reputed than whatever has actually managed to look into Tether's data. Like the New York Attorney General? Go read the NYAG settlement. Tether got an attestation by wiring in $850m of Bitfinex's cash to their account the mo…

> Tether doesn't have any defense I am not defending Tether, quite the opposite. My only argument is in favor of Circle, and even then admittedly in terms of "Circle at least provides a better sense of legitimacy". > I get that you want someone to pump your bags. Sure, I will make a fortune by shilling USDC. /s Anyway, you are right. I was under the impression that Circle was doing proper audits, and if that is not t…

> I am not defending Tether, quite the opposite. My only argument is in favor of Circle, and even then admittedly in terms of "Circle at least provides a better sense of legitimacy".

My bad, lost my sense of bearing in a Tether thread. I agree with you here, and for the blockchain work I do, I use USDC.

Appreciate the rest of your comments. Didn't mean to jump on you.

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

#163

Post by authed »

pezzana wrote: post #65

And? So what? If that quantity of Tether (1/75 of the float) were dumped into the open market for USD, you'd expect to see the USD change rate fall. That clearly hasn't happened. The rate has been very close to 1:1 forever. There's this unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that as I gather goes like this: Tether prints tokens, uses them to buy bitcoin when the USDBTC exchange rate falls. These Tether issuance spikes alw…

> That clearly hasn't happened. The rate has been very close to 1:1 forever.

I tried to set a buy order for Tether at less than $1 and the exchange (Kraken) would not let me, maybe that's why?

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

#164

Post by dragonwriter »

atdrummond wrote: post #46
secondcoming wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A loaf of bread would cost $100

A UBI doesn’t necessarily result in inflation. The later is a combination of monetary policy and expectations. UBIs can be paid by means other than printing money.

> A UBI doesn’t necessarily result in inflation. The later is a combination of monetary policy and expectations.

All fiscal policy is monetary policy; government spending its own fiat is money creation.

UBI is expansionary monetary policy. (Of course, it can be offset with money destruction, e.g., taxation.)

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

#165

Post by qeternity »

FDSGSG wrote: post #157
qeternity wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol Tether's own attestations make mention of the numerous open investigations. There's no good faith argument to be had. It's just a matter of fact.

The idea that one could just "clean up" government investigations is downright ridiculous. That's not how it works, no matter how innocent you may be.

You might be attaching some temporal qualities to the phrasing, but that's not how I read the comment. Generally, if you want to make a government investigation go away, you cooperate by demonstrating your innocence. Of course, it's the government's job to prove guilt, but usually good actors have an abundance of mitigating evidence at their disposal, and it's usually just easier to say "here's the evidence, we're not guilty".

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

#166

Post by gruez »

notjesse wrote: post #155
bb88 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 crea…

This makes me think; what if you shorted USDT? There seems to be almost no scenario where USDT becomes more valuable than the USD, and the worst case is it continues to be worth the same. But there is a fair probability it becomes worthless, meaning that you gain from it. While you need to pay premiums in the interim, for something with an indefinite timeframe, that risk seems fairly minor for the potential reward.

>But there is a fair probability it becomes worthless, meaning that you gain from it.

>While you need to pay premiums in the interim, for something with an indefinite timeframe, that risk seems fairly minor for the potential reward.

1. the chance of collapse might be lower than you think. the "tether is going to collapse any day now" sentiment has been around for years now, but collapse has proved elusive.

2. borrowing costs are high. I searched around and it looks like the APY for lending out tether is around 9%. The cost for borrowing tether is certainly higher. If you held a $100 short position for 5 years, and there was a total collapse at the end of year 5, then you'd make $65 (factoring in interest payments). That sounds good, but chances are thether probably has more money in the bank than $0. If it only collapsed to $60 (ie. they went bankrupt but had 60 cents of real money for every dollar issued), then you'd only make $5.

3. there are rumors/conspiracy theories that tether/bitfinex/tether affiliated exchanges force USDT/USD rates up periodically to force liquidation of tether short sellers. If you're caught in one, you'd lose money and be forced to rebuy tethers at an unfavorable price.

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

#167

Post by FDSGSG »

qeternity wrote: post #165
FDSGSG wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that one could just "clean up" government investigations is downright ridiculous. That's not how it works, no matter how innocent you may be.

You might be attaching some temporal qualities to the phrasing, but that's not how I read the comment. Generally, if you want to make a government investigation go away, you cooperate by demonstrating your innocence. Of course, it's the government's job to prove guilt, but usually good actors have an abundance of mitigating evidence at their disposal, and it's usually just easier to say "here's the evidence, we're no…

> but usually good actors have an abundance of mitigating evidence at their disposal

You must be joking. That's not how it works when the government has you in their crosshairs.

>and it's usually just easier to say "here's the evidence, we're not guilty".

And then the government will spend years and millions of dollars trying to poke holes in that evidence of innocence.

Anyone who follows the news has seen this repeated over and over again. Various government authorities routinely engage in witch hunts with little evidence.

Maybe Mansoor Adayfi should've just provided evidence of his innocence after being shipped to Guantanamo Bay? They would have immediately released him, right? What a stupid guy he must have been that it took the government 14 years to release him.

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

#168

Post by qeternity »

Why do crypto/Tether critical threads always sink very quickly on HN? This was #2 when I saw it, now it's second page.

> Tips on adding JSON output to your CLI app (kellybrazil.com)

> 67 points by kbrazil 3 hours ago | flag | hide | 21 comments

Current #4 was submitted at the same time, but has 36% of the votes, and 13% of the comment activity. I'm no expert, but that sort of engagement you'd expect to be punching above the current #4.

What gives @dang?

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

#169

Post by qeternity »

FDSGSG wrote: post #167
qeternity wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be attaching some temporal qualities to the phrasing, but that's not how I read the comment. Generally, if you want to make a government investigation go away, you cooperate by demonstrating your innocence. Of course, it's the government's job to prove guilt, but usually good actors have an abundance of mitigating evidence at their disposal, and it's usually just easier to say "here's the evidence, we're no…

> but usually good actors have an abundance of mitigating evidence at their disposal You must be joking. That's not how it works when the government has you in their crosshairs. >and it's usually just easier to say "here's the evidence, we're not guilty". And then the government will spend years and millions of dollars trying to poke holes in that evidence of innocence. Anyone who follows the news has seen this repea…

I am talking about white collar crime, which tends to be much more black and white than terrorism. And no, the government doesn't have a history of spending millions in trying to chase frivolous cases. Has it happened? Sure. But prosecutors are graded on their closure rate which is why you see so many settlements. The last thing they want is to waste millions on a witch hunt.

You only see the bad. You say "anyone who follows the news" which means you've probably followed a handful of these...out of the millions of cases which get referred to prosecutors: the vast majority are ignored, the remainder are mostly settled, and a small amount end up in court. Government is a necessary evil, but an evil nonetheless. I'm quite libertarian myself, but let's not concoct ridiculous narratives to affirm our views.

Post reply on HN