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Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

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Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#141

Post by acdha »

cinntaile wrote: post #76
iSnow wrote: post #29

Does crypto do anything but cause troubles? If it's not actively destroying the environment, then it's endangering financial stability. How does the government not step in here?

Any economic activity is basically actively destroying the environment though. The big difference is that there are a few supply chain steps that get bypassed before value is created. I know I know, someone will take issue with that and say that no value is created with crypto when a coin gets minted and the rewards are distributed while value is created along each supply chain step when you manufacture a car. But if…

Who outside of the cryptocurrency industry would notice if they disappeared?

Who outside of the automotive industry would notice if cars disappeared?

That's your answer: pollution is still a concern but only one of those is balanced against significant real-world benefits for people other than the sellers.

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#142

Post by acdha »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #89
NelsonMinar wrote: post #56

Any guesses why this post is flagged and not visible on the HN home page?

It's now unflagged and back on the front page. Weird.

This happens for most things which are critical of cryptocurrencies, unproven COVID-19 treatments, etc. There's a group of people who try to flag them off of the homepage but the moderators appear to block that after confirming that the article is of legitimate interest.

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#143

Post by jandrese »

adflux wrote: post #136
Ice_cream_suit wrote: post #120

LOL ! "The chief financial officer is Giancarlo Devasini, a former plastic surgeon from Italy who was once described on Tether’s website as the founder of a successful electronics business. The only reference to him that turned up in a search of Italian newspapers showed he was once fined for selling counterfeit Microsoft software. Elsewhere on the website, there’s a letter from an accounting firm stating that Tether…

Tether most likely holding CHINESE paper. The kind that probably lost a lot of value in the past weeks. Follow BennettTomlin on Twitter, he has been researching tether for years.

Or it could be like so many cryptocurrency adjacent businesses a straight up scam/Ponzi scheme.

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#144

Post by qeternity »

post-it wrote: post #129
qeternity wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's L1 season You say this as if it’s a valid thesis outside of CT. Solana has exploded because Alameda, Cumberland and related VCs have made it so. > Young people are locked out of any and all assets. They can't afford real estate or any meaningful amount of stock. Savings accounts have a negative yield. Casually ignores Robinhood and equity markets, where most of any under 50s should have most of their wealth. F…

I think their point is that crypto is an interactive lottery ticket. If you have $5 to spare, you can't turn it into $10 000 with Robin Hood in a year, but you might with crypto.

I really don’t get why people say this. The only periods of time when it has been true, when coins are doing 1,000x are during massive Tether fueled bubbles (2017 and 2021). If you believe the writing is on the wall for Tether, then this is not a +ev strategy.

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#145

Post by jkhdigital »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #72
jkhdigital wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So convert the USDC to dollars and withdraw the dollars. Done.

Like I said, USDC is not dollars. If you're betting on Tether collapsing you sure as hell aren't going to take payment on that bet in USDC.

…okay, so if I deposit USDC at Coinbase, I can instantly convert the entire balance into USD, and then withdraw that USD to my bank account. The statement that “USDC is not USD” means nothing to anyone who has access to instant and reliable conversion between the two.

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#146

Post by fleddr »

notJim wrote: post #117
fleddr wrote: post #46

"Solana, up 9,801% in 2021 for seemingly no reason at all" No reason at all, huh? Anybody with even a remote interest in crypto knows why Solana has exploded. It's L1 season and Solana is a direct competitor to ETH, which suffers from high usage fees. Every other L1 has exploded in value. As said, L1 season. These kind of statements make me suspect the author never used crypto in their life. The cultural gap between…

> Nobody cares. Because they have nothing to lose anyway and will just start over. Because the underlying economic issues did not change. If crypto was only these people, I'd have more sympathy for them. But in reality, it's some of those people, and then tons of far more sophisticated people who are trying to take advantage of the rubes. In the end, the Tether people will make out like bandits, and everyone else wil…

Like I said, that doesn't sound threatening or scary at all. Because it happens all the time. Crashes, rug pulls, hacks...all regular occurrences.

That's the price to pay for the incredible upside potential. People that can't stomach this, should simply not be in the game.

Alternatively, and the wiser strategy, is that you put a portion of your wealth in crypto, say 10-25%. The absolute worst thing that can happen is to lose it all, which is only possible if you don't know what you're doing. But is still survivable, as you still got your 75%.

Let's assume you're "sophisticated" and have 100K.

If you're not a complete moron, you then turn that 25K into 100K. It's stupidly easy to make money in crypto. Wait for a crash, get in, wait for the bull market. Which comes and goes. Allocate 75% to Bitcoin and ether and take more risk with the other 25% on midcap coins. Derisk by deploying a progressive profit taking scheme and auto buy small amounts using a DCA strategy. None of this requires even touching Tether.

So let's do the math. Your downside potential is from 100K to 75K. Your upside potential is from 100K to 175K. A reasonable timeline is 2-3 years, given cycles.

That's a 400% return on the crypto part. Doing only 400% in crypto terms makes you a shitty trader, it means you're very bad at it.

So that's why they call it an asymmetrical bet. The upside is many multiples of the downside. Asymmetrical bets are rare, once in a generation.

But they're not for everyone, and that's fine.

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#147

Post by jkhdigital »

X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #81
NelsonMinar wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like I said, USDC is not dollars. If you're betting on Tether collapsing you sure as hell aren't going to take payment on that bet in USDC.

They're different organizations, few people seriously think that USDC is going to 0.

And USDC can be converted back into actual dollars, on demand, not via a market transaction but literally a 1:1 conversion, through a variety of exchanges. You cannot say the same of Tether.

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#148

Post by trident5000 »

arcticbull wrote: post #126
trident5000 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it would increase as tether would need to dump into btc on exchanges like bitfinex and most know this dynamic by now. But who even cares. If it craters like it did during covid from fear selling it just comes back in a month or so.

It only came back because of USDT. This is true according to the chat transcripts in the NYAG filings between Bitfinex’ Merlin and the money launderers they parked money with.

Surely you can provide a source for that (where exactly this was said)? As far as I have seen they dont show anything demonstrating this. And this tin foil hat theory about tether pumping btc has been debunked repeatedly.

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#149

Post by jkhdigital »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #88
TacticalCoder wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USDC is backed by Coinbase (USDC are issued by Centre, a joint venture of Coinbase and Circle if I'm not mistaken). And Coinbase is an HN unicorn. Everybody at Coinbase is known, it's operated from the US. Coinbase ain't anywhere, not even remotely, like tether/bitfinex. There totally exists a world in which USDT goes to 0 while USDC is still worth 1 USD.

It's like you never heard of the 2008/2009 financial crisis and how financial contagion works. Also Coinbase is not so pristine or pure. They were misleading customers with a gentler version of the same thing Tether did. "Coinbase Vowed Token’s All-Cash Backing; That’s Not True". https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-11/coinbase-...

Doesn’t matter that much whether it’s “100% backed” or whatever. The time it takes to (1) send USDC to Coinbase, (2) convert that USDC to USD, and (3) withdraw the USD to a bank account is short enough (less than a day by wire transfer) that the counterparty risk is pretty darn minimal.

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#150

Post by SilasX »

qeternity wrote: post #139
SilasX wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>OP is obviously talking about CEX Certainly -- I agree OP (arcticbull) was replying to a comment about DeFI by explaining the dangers of a centralized exchange! That makes it a confused, unhelpful response, not one that "obviously" meant something coherent if you squint hard enough and practice sufficiently strained exegesis. >As for DEXs being manipulated, absolutely not sure why you believe that’s the case? This h…

> Margin has "come to" DEX the moment smartcontracts offer collateralized DeFi lending, which they have, so I'm not sure what you mean here. Ok, fair. What I mean is high leverage, which is the fuel for the type of manipulation I’m referring to. To your point about CEX lying about price, that’s a very risky proposition for the arbitrage reasons you mention (CEX arbitrage actually easier for a number of reasons, but I…

>Ok, fair. What I mean is high leverage, which is the fuel for the type of manipulation I’m referring to.

Why does that make a difference? And how is it any more coherent to talk about margin "coming to" DEX? The moment anyone can borrow on margin, it has "come to" DEX. You keep speaking with a mental model of DEX that doesn't jibe with reality, like they're walled gardens rather than platforms open to anyone with little friction other than gas fees.

>To your point about CEX lying about price, that’s a very risky proposition for the arbitrage reasons you mention (CEX arbitrage actually easier for a number of reasons, but I understand why you’d think DEX is easier).

It's fun to idly speculate about this, but we know for a fact that flash crashes have happened on centralized exchanges, which is stronger evidence than any of your assertions of superior understanding of how they work. Furthermore, people have had their margin liquidated on those CEXes at the fake prices.

>No, I said capital efficiency, not execution cost. DEX costs are crazy, but that’s by choice, whereas the capital efficiency is a structural issue. If I want to provide liquidity on 100 CEX markets, I only need enough capital to wear the orders I actually get filled on at any given point in time. As an AMM I’d have have enough capital to be in a 100 different LPs.

If that's what you meant, then it's coming from the same dubious mental model I complained about above -- when you enter into a liquidity pool, you are providing liquidity to the entire cryptocurrency's network, not just people who are "on" that DEX (which isn't a coherent concept). Anyone and everyone has the option to accept that offer (sorry, "remove that liquidity"). Several protocols look at the entire DEX market to find the best (combination of) price(s). You do not need to be in multiple liquidity pools (which, again, not a coherent concept).

LPs are not something you have to "be in"; you as a trader are free to accept the offers (sorry, "remove the liquidity") of any LP in existence.

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