I'm a bit of a finance noob; is there any practical way to enter a long-term short position on usdt that would actually be redeemable if the Bitcoin ecosystem were to collapse after its downfall?
Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?
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Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?
#392If you're interested in Tether, I highly recommend the Crypto Critics' Corner podcast: https://cryptocriticscorner.com/episode-list/.
Bennet Tomlin and Cas Piancey have done a fantastic job chronicling the story.
Their blog posts are also quite good:
- https://thecaspiancey.medium.com/finding-finex-3eefac0d45a2
Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?
#393Seems there is a (very large) market for a legit version of Tether. What's stopping some other company from doing what Tether does with more traditional commercial paper / US based short term loans / govt. bonds / etc.?
There are multiple alternatives that are far more trustworthy.
Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?
#394Seems there is a (very large) market for a legit version of Tether. What's stopping some other company from doing what Tether does with more traditional commercial paper / US based short term loans / govt. bonds / etc.?
Why not use more traditional commercial paper / US based short term loans / govt. bonds / etc. directly then? I mean you can rephrase it but you quickly end up with reinventing the wheel - an old, established, well-regulated, secured and guaranteed wheel.
If you want fiat currency, use fiat currency. If you want a secure location to store and transfer your money, use a bank.
If you want to support a dodgy organization's fake digital money printing scam though, go with Tether.
Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?
#395The thing that's always surprised me about Tether is the confidence people have in it without a fully transparent accounting being available of their collateral. Also they by their own admission in 2019 they only had 74% of the liabilities covered but people still seem to have confidence in them having 100% reserves. Collateral issues have been known since at least as far back as 2019: https://www.ccn.com/tether-lawy…
It kinda ties in with modern-day anti-establishment conspiracy thinking; big banks are bad, just like science is bad. It kinda started with the vaccines cause autism trend, which quickly devolved into vaccines are Bill Gates' 5G chips for mind control, gargle bleach instead.
Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?
#396You can short Tether on FTX. You have to pay ~4% funding per year to short USDT-PERP. But if you think Tether collapses within 25 years its a good bet (probably going to come a lot sooner).
Doesn't shorting depend on someone else agreeing to pay you no matter what at the end of its runtime? I don't see that happening. And who would be liable, the party loaning you the share? They would disappear. The exchange? Bankrupt. Tether itself? It'll vanish pretty much overnight.
There are no guarantees that you would get any money if you short something unregulated like tether.
Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I keep waiting for Yakety Sax to start playing, but to the true believers, it never does, and apparently all us nay-sayers are just neanderthal and don't see "the vision". It reminds me of the initial dot-com bubble, where anybody who asked questions was also painted as not getting it. Ditto the mortgage bubble, come to think of it. Then when the inevitable crash comes, nobody apologizes. It's either "who could hav…
I’ve seen this happen in companies with stupid projects. Same thing happened with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Anyone who dares ask questions is ignored, sidelined, or fired. Seems to be a general pattern when there is an economic or policy “bubble” and big players in an organization or sector are holding the bag. Everyone who holds cryptocurrency is holding Tether’s bag of poo. No they are not even the majority of…
> Everyone who holds cryptocurrency is holding Tether’s bag of poo.
Or they recognize you can't time the market, and see upside despite a nearly-inevitable tether crash? If investors had been waiting for tether to crash they would have missed the run from $1k - $30+k, and I don't think you can claim with a straight face that was all tether manipulation. Again, can't time the market.
Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?
#398I'm a bit of a finance noob; is there any practical way to enter a long-term short position on usdt that would actually be redeemable if the Bitcoin ecosystem were to collapse after its downfall?
Gotta do it the old-fashioned way:
1) Find someone you know and trust who owns enough USDT.
2) Borrow their USDT, then immediately sell them for USD.
3) Pay some fee over time for the loan, and then have the contract expire at some point.
You would need some kind of contract for the fees and end condition, but it could just be an email that you agree to. If you don't know and trust any cryptofans, then no, there isn't a good way.
Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not a ponzi per se. My guess is that they take the money from exchanges, mint more tokens at no cost to themselves and buy a bunch of junk bonds with high yields and pocket the 8% or whatever they make in those. Given their market cap that is a lot of money. They always use precise wording about their holdings “commercial paper”. I’m guessing it’s not US treasury bonds equivalents or they would say that explicit…
It is a ponzi/illegal bank scheme the moment they mint more tokens than they have liquid assets. Could they come clean, will there be a bank/USDT run? Depends of how much USDT real clients hold and how much USD they hold, and how likely it is that EVERYONE wants to convert USDT back to USD -- it would take a very catastrophic collapse of cryptos for that to happen. USDT has intrinsic value for money laundering, so ev…
Ponzi has a pretty specific meaning..illegal banking scheme sure.
Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?
#400Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can only do that at exchanges that are seriously exposed to systemic Tether risk and will also collapse if USDT goes down. So even if you're right, you won't get paid on USDT/USD swaps. Shorting USDT at Bitfinex is like shorting Caesars chips at Caesars . News flash: if Caesars goes bankrupt just which cashier do you think is gonna give you which dollars?
At this moment you can deposit defi borrowed usdt into Coinbase pro, swap it for usdc there, and then swap the usdc back to USD and withdraw to your bank account. Then if tether collapses you'd be able to pay back the borrowed usdt for pennies on the dollar.
The first step (borrowing usdt on a defi platform) needs you to collateralize that loan with some other form of cryptocurrency. You are forced to have exposure to crypto to make the trade that shorts it.