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Tether starting to lose its peg too, after Terra did

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Re: Tether starting to lose its peg too, after Terra did

#621
post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currency pegs and currency boards can work quite well. You just need sufficient assets to cover them. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_board Btw, not only sovereign nations have these issues. Your bank also tries to maintain a peg between one dollar in its account books and one dollar in government money. Similar (but more roundabout) for things like Amazon gift cards. For a country without an established,…

No, pegs are nonsense. If you want something USD-denominated, buy USD. The cardinal sin committed was pegging in the first place, which always was doomed to failure because the scale of the effort would attract either a bank run or raid, guarantied. Let's say you're a hedge fund looking for a one-way bet that will profit massively in a crypto crash (that stablecoins can't survive) and has no downside except carrying…

There are only two ways to hold USD: physical cash and database entries at the Fed.

The former is really inconvenient, especially if you want to transfer money. The latter is only available to a select few companies.

Everything is else at most assets denominated in (= pegged to) USD.

Does your critique apply to all these other categories as well? Why or why not?

Re: Tether starting to lose its peg too, after Terra did

#623
post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be a law that currencies are used for legitimate payments for more than X% and otherwise the currencies should be marked as gambling money. How to measure? I don't know, but I'm sure the IRS can come up with something.

A law where? To the extent that Tether is anywhere, it's in notorious financial law evasion island Grand Cayman. It's already illegal to supply overseas gambling services to Americans (Pokerstars). Quite a lot of the crypto world would arguably be ruled illegal under existing law if it was prosecuted before an American court - or a British one, or many other jurisdictions. It's just that there's so much of it, it mov…

It’s not illegal to play Pokerstars in America. Its a states rights issue. Some states allow it and some don’t and the ones that don’t could allow it using their various mechanisms for changing the laws (like California’s props or Florida’s citizen ballots) if they wanted to but they don’t. Probably a strong correlation between lottery revenue and online poker being illegal but that’s just a theory without facts backing it.

Re: Tether starting to lose its peg too, after Terra did

#624
post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The billions of dollars of _backing_ should show up somewhere. https://twitter.com/dsquareddigest/status/140291428628503347... > again - who is on the CP desk at Tether? Who is their account manager at Goldman Sachs? Who do they talk to at, say, the GE corporate treasury? Commercial paper is a short term money market that has to be managed and rolled - you can't just buy and hold the bonds anonymously. Dan's argument…

From what I heard, Tether had invested heavily in "emerging markets" instead of the established US markets, which explains why nobody at Goldman Sachs has dealt with them.

What do you mean by “emerging markets”? Goldman Sachs has tons of people whose entire jobs are dealing with those in the common meaning of the term – they manage dedicated funds for their customers! It seems highly unlikely that they wouldn’t have at least some basic awareness of anyone doing business at that scale.

Given the space and the degree to which they refuse to reveal normal financial information, I assume they’re either directly involved in fraud/money laundering or are treating other cryptocurrency companies’ debt as far more stable than it actually is. This is such a common criticism and there’s no reason why you’d keep it this secretive if the news was good.

Re: Tether starting to lose its peg too, after Terra did

#625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless your bank kicks you out by some reason (incompetent compliance). Unless foreign bank refuses your transaction because the bank doesn’t like the color of your passport. Unless somehow banking system wants to cut extra from your transaction (2.5-4% for transaction) because of double currency conversion you didn’t ask for, because you didn’t specify correct correspondent bank and your bank didn’t tell you about…

Nothing you wrote makes any sense. We are talking about stable coins. Where does speculations fits here? Also could you make an argument without making accusations?

The "stable" part of the -coin is all marketing. It's true while enough people believe it's true... and if at any point enough people disbelieve it, it'll be everything but.

Re: Tether starting to lose its peg too, after Terra did

#626
post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually hate people disavowing themselves of responsibility here. While there is definitely some shady stuff in Crypto (particularly NFTs, which seem to be 99% scams), there's a certain level of personal responsibility required here. People saw the meteoric rise of Bitcoin and got a serious case of FOMO. Everyone wanted to be on the next Bitcoin. This, ultimately, is the American Dream: to get rich by doing nothin…

> I actually hate people disavowing themselves of responsibility here. It's easy to say "they should have known" better because in absolutist terms it's correct. But you're focusing on the 'what' and not the 'why'. For example: https://rollcall.com/2021/09/07/left-behind-by-financial-sys... "Normal" investing is complicated, and stacked against regular people. Now we're asking people to understand blockchain and cryp…

> "Normal" investing is complicated, and stacked against regular people.

You buy a low-cost index fund (either S&P 500 or total market (Russell 3000, Wilshire 5000)), and depending on your risk tolerance, a bond fund as well.

You can have global diversification with one ETF or mutual fund:

* https://www.youngandthrifty.ca/picking-the-best-all-in-one-e...

Re: Tether starting to lose its peg too, after Terra did

#627
post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it the casino foult that their customers loose money Casinos are very strictly regulated and must post the exact rules and probability of winning for all their games. If the casino lies about the rules of the game or your chances of winning, then yes it is absolutely their fault and they will be held liable.

Yes and everyone warned everyone investing in crypto that it could go from hero to zero instantly. I cant believe anyone didnt know this risk.

There's a slight problem in your use of "everyone". You, personally, don't know or have sampled everyone. You are using it as a indication that "people warned" and "people should know", given people warned other people.

Saying you can't believe people didn't know is just showing lack of empathy in how others form trust. Many of those people form trust by looking at a screen and seeing a nice website with nice logins and nice charts. They look at things with dollar signs and say, "that's a good number there". Others dig in and are curious about how things work. Some laugh when people complain about how much power proof-of-work takes and believe it is the eniventible conclusion to why we don't see aliens out there.

Don't be the wurst person. Be the best! See that all humans need our help from an understanding technology perspective. Know that software can be implemented to take away their choices, or give them more choices than they had before.

Re: Tether starting to lose its peg too, after Terra did

#628
post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually hate people disavowing themselves of responsibility here. While there is definitely some shady stuff in Crypto (particularly NFTs, which seem to be 99% scams), there's a certain level of personal responsibility required here. People saw the meteoric rise of Bitcoin and got a serious case of FOMO. Everyone wanted to be on the next Bitcoin. This, ultimately, is the American Dream: to get rich by doing nothin…

> I actually hate people disavowing themselves of responsibility here. It's easy to say "they should have known" better because in absolutist terms it's correct. But you're focusing on the 'what' and not the 'why'. For example: https://rollcall.com/2021/09/07/left-behind-by-financial-sys... "Normal" investing is complicated, and stacked against regular people. Now we're asking people to understand blockchain and cryp…

> "Normal" investing is complicated,

Buy a broad based, low cost index fund. What exactly is complicated about that?

> and stacked against regular people.

How so?

Re: Tether starting to lose its peg too, after Terra did

#629
post #55

The fact that they've been minting billions of tether without collateral should make it abundantly obvious that this isn't a stablecoin and never had been. Anyone can pretend to have a peg in the good times, that doesn't mean there's really a peg or that the peg will remain in bad times. And if you can't count on the peg in bad times, it's not a stablecoin. If you've been honestly working on the assumption that it is…

> If you've been honestly working on the assumption that it is, then you deserve to lose your (real) money to some crypto VCs on an island somewhere. The sad reality is that many poorer and financially illeterate people have been tricked by VCs and other grifters into this with billions of dollars spent in advertising. So, no, they don't deserve to lose their money to these assholes. These assholes need to be prosecu…

I’m not that old, but I’ve already realized that get rich quick schemes sometimes work but ultimately fail for most participants.

People who engage in this stuff get very little sympathy from me. They were complicit in an obvious lie because they thought they’d make some easy money.

Re: Tether starting to lose its peg too, after Terra did

#630
post #594
post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American dream is to make it through hard work, what you are referring to is simple greed and laziness and it’s been around since humanity attained consciousness.

This is propaganda based on a mix of the Protestant work ethic and stoicism in an effort to keep the populace compliant and malleable. This is why political parties are constantly in the business of creating wedge issues to distract people so they don't figure out their lot in life is determined by their material conditions.

Which is itself propaganda from other religious sects of note who got so fast and loose with doctrine they allowed salvation to become pay-to-win (indulgences), and corruption to become so endemic, even members of the faith started nailing protests to doors, or schisming due to overreach by the theocratic edifice.

If uou're going to make a historical argument, please follow through.

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