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Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research, pleads guilty to seven offences

theguardian.com

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Re: Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research, pleads guilty to seven offences

#112
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's all just a little joke. Super funny to every single person who lost money to the person "getting in the record books for 'most money lost by a single individual'".

Yes it is quite funny when people get surprised that a get rich scheme isn’t real.

Even those who aren't informed enough to know better than to be taken advantage of?

Re: Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research, pleads guilty to seven offences

#113
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't claim it's backed 1:1 by USD. They claim it's backed by more or less liquid alternatives: https://tether.to/en/transparency/#reports

Now they do (previously they claimed 1:1 with actual dollars in a bank account, but failed to demonstrate that). But that 80% "Commercial paper" is suspicious as hell, considering it would make up more than half the total market for said paper (so 'liquid' is already questionable), and no-one else in the market has heard of them.

They're now claiming no commercial paper. I'm not sure if that's more or less suspicious.

Re: Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research, pleads guilty to seven offences

#114

She’s the queen of wallstreetbets. I think she’ll hold the yolo record for a long time. I wish we knew what the fateful market play was that sunk her ship. She mentioned she’s not a fan of stop losses, so I wonder if she went to bed with an open market position and woke up to negative three billion. Also I wonder if the entity on the other side of that trade realized they were making someone insolvent. It’ll be inter…

I think you are assuming way too much here. She's not the queen of anything, she's a fraudster that will spend a long time in jail and that has probably much less understanding of the mechanisms involved than you give her credit for. If she did she wouldn't be in the position she's in. The last thing we really need is for people to start lionizing her.

[deleted]

Re: Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research, pleads guilty to seven offences

#115
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like they were ordered to give the plaintiffs the documents, but they weren’t ordered to publicly release them. NYAG also looked into them last year. They were fined but it doesn’t seem like anything else came of it. > The New York Attorney General’s probe into Tether’s reserves concluded in February 2021 with an $18.5 million settlement. I don’t hold any tether, and I wouldn’t recommend it to others. But th…

I mostly agree and I'm actually amazed at how FTX was doing crazy shit instead of just making exchange money the legal way, but... isn't it super-expensive to truly back up tether with cash? I mean, it's kind of an extraordinary claim that they have a few bil of cash stashed in a mattress just sitting there backing things up 1:1 ready to get withdrawn any second.

It wouldn’t need to be cash per say, just cash or very liquid and low risk assets like USTs. The yield on treasuries isn’t high, but given the volumes at play it’d generate a lot of cashflow.

Re: Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research, pleads guilty to seven offences

#116
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are all the Tether holders complaining that they can't convert it into dollars?

To answer that question you first have to figure out who they are. Tether mostly moves around, people don't hold it. That is to say, exchanges like Binance are heavily dependent on USDT. Those are the only venues you as an individual have to exchange tethers for USD (of course this is not the same as a redemption which is solely at Tether's discretion). Why would the exchanges ever come to Tether for the cash knowing…

HN has been talking about how Tether is a scam and how it will blow up AnyMomentNow(TM) for two years.

Meanwhile, there was no talk on HN about Luna or FTX being a scam before they imploded.

In finance, when everybody "knows" something, it's 99% likely to be false. Because there is a lot of money to be made knowing actual facts in finance.

Re: Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research, pleads guilty to seven offences

#117

She’s the queen of wallstreetbets. I think she’ll hold the yolo record for a long time. I wish we knew what the fateful market play was that sunk her ship. She mentioned she’s not a fan of stop losses, so I wonder if she went to bed with an open market position and woke up to negative three billion. Also I wonder if the entity on the other side of that trade realized they were making someone insolvent. It’ll be inter…

I think you are assuming way too much here. She's not the queen of anything, she's a fraudster that will spend a long time in jail and that has probably much less understanding of the mechanisms involved than you give her credit for. If she did she wouldn't be in the position she's in. The last thing we really need is for people to start lionizing her.

[deleted]

Re: Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research, pleads guilty to seven offences

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Queen of WSB and yolo record are not a good thing... that is a subreddit that mocks bad risk management by ironically celebrating it. They know exactly what she is over there.

Hah maybe at one point was that sub ironic, it's been unironic for years now.

[deleted]

Re: Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research, pleads guilty to seven offences

#120
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She mentioned she’s not a fan of stop losses At the volume they were trading, stop losses are no longer practical. The market is not infinitely deep.

I've never understood how stop losses are supposed to help. Traders read heaps of news, do God knows what technical analysis yet simple "moves bit too much in wrong direction" is supposed to be an acceptable exit strategy.

If you trade highly leveraged stuff, you need stop losses; otherwise there is a considerable chance you will go bankrupt. Especially when you take bets on interest rate decisions, take the sweeps at market open and other stuff (you can gain a few hundred points on NQ1! per contract easily during such times).

Also, it's a psychological thing: traders think in risk. If they were mistaken with a trade idea, they close the position with a small loss. Easy, just move on to the next!

But when a position is already deep in the reds, it becomes increasingly harder to press the "close"-button and realize the loss.

I know somebody who lost a few hundred grand just a few weeks ago because he was unable to close the position. He didn't set an initial stop loss, and then started believing in his trade (or the company) too much, although the market was telling him otherwise. He started doing dollar cost averaging and other stupid stuff. Actually, this guy is incredibly smart, but became too attached. I feel genuinely sorry for him. But that's what happens, when you don't have the discipline.

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