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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

#241

Post by thaumasiotes »

nradov wrote: post #234
thaumasiotes wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA actually does have laws against creating anything that might be interpreted as competing with the official currency. This is the most likely avenue for violence to come in, as people try to resist devalued money by using substitutes.

There are generally no laws in the USA against creating and using alternative currencies. I can buy and sell using Euros or Monopoly money or whatever if I can find a willing counterparty. However, if those transactions are taxable then I have to report them at the US Dollar fair market value equivalent and pay any taxes due in US Dollars. And if someone owes me a debt I am required to accept US Dollars for settlemen…

> There are generally no laws in the USA against creating and using alternative currencies.

This is not correct. If you try minting coins, you can be shut down. You can buy and sell using whatever you want, yes. There aren't laws against using alternative currencies. But there very much are laws against creating them.

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

#242

Post by atdrummond »

anamax wrote: post #208
atdrummond wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If everyone has $1000 to spend on bread, bread seller can charge $1000 without losing sales.

Only if there’s a bread cartel. Otherwise it’ll sell at a much lower equilibrium price, as anyone who can undercut him will take all his sales while still profiting (as marginal cost of additional bread production is well below $1000).

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

#243

Post by natch »

post_from_work wrote: post #217
natch wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in other words, long term, it's backed by toilet paper.

The toilet paper is backed by nuclear weapons and the world's most offensively-capable Navy and Air Force (arguably no longer the world's largest Navy so I clarified the metrics).

Can’t put my finger on why that backing seems dubious. Didn’t I read about a smackdown somewhere recently done by some ragtag dudes with Kalashnikovs? Talibsomething.

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

#244

Post by anamax »

atdrummond wrote: post #242
anamax wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everyone has $1000 to spend on bread, bread seller can charge $1000 without losing sales.

Only if there’s a bread cartel. Otherwise it’ll sell at a much lower equilibrium price, as anyone who can undercut him will take all his sales while still profiting (as marginal cost of additional bread production is well below $1000).

There's always a bread cartel.

In this case, what fool would make bread when they can get $1000 by sitting around and smoking weed?

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

#245

Post by oliwarner »

errcorrectcode wrote: post #240
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…

Musical chairs is a sign it's likely an illegal pyramid scheme.

At least in musical chairs some others get to keep their chairs. When a currency fails, you can't sell it because nobody else will touch it. Everyone loses… save the first out.

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

#246

Post by bb88 »

lamontcg wrote: post #203
notjesse wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If USDT collapses it will take out multiple exchanges with it, and the fact that you have a winning position won't matter if the the people running the exchange it was on have entirely disappeared to sandy beaches somewhere. Counterparty risk during the systemic "banking" collapse will be very high, and completely uninsured.

If you have extracted the cash in dollars somehow before the crash, then it would work, but you have to move your money out of the exchange as fast as you can.

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

#247

Post by londons_explore »

bb88 wrote: post #246
lamontcg wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If USDT collapses it will take out multiple exchanges with it, and the fact that you have a winning position won't matter if the the people running the exchange it was on have entirely disappeared to sandy beaches somewhere. Counterparty risk during the systemic "banking" collapse will be very high, and completely uninsured.

If you have extracted the cash in dollars somehow before the crash, then it would work, but you have to move your money out of the exchange as fast as you can.

All exchanges require staff interaction for large withdrawals. You can be sure that in a very volatile market, friends of exchange operators will get priority.

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

#248

Post by LittlePeter »

tzone wrote: post #174
qeternity wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Contrary to popular belief, there is generally huge demand spike for USDT when crypto market has flash crashes, not other way around. This is not contrary to popular belief at all. Tether almost always prints a few billion around large pullbacks, and the cynical view is that this is to stabilize markets by buying the dip. > More USDT got issued because there was opportunity to make 0.1-0.2% on each new USDT since d…

While I am no huge volume arbitrageour/market maker, I actually make a living running arbitrage systems and market making systems specifically for stablecoins. I do consider to know what I am talking about, considering my systems make hefty profits and have no real exposure to volatile crypto assets (or even long term exposure to crypto in general, my profits are in real world dollars). This is why I know that USDT h…

Market making on crypto exchanges is difficult because of high fees, small tick sizes, and minuscule spreads. Of course you can get volume discounts, but still.

On which exchanges do you trade and do you rely on volume discounts to make profit?

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

#249

Post by rasz »

alpha_squared wrote: post #11

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 print $Billions, so much money they can buy anyone 100 times over.

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

#250

Post by earnesti »

danielvf wrote: post #220
gruez wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. borrowi…

I work with a blockchain project that lends a lot of USDT, USDC, and DAI. The cost at this moment to borrow USDT on the blockchain is 4%-5% for any amount, or 3.75% in bulk while playing defi games. The two biggest to lend it are Compound [0] and AAVE[1]. [0] https://compound.finance/markets/USDT [1] https://app.aave.com/#/reserve-overview/0xdac17f958d2ee523a2...

Where can you borrow tethers bulk?
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