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Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

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Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#421

Post by thebean11 »

freewilly1040 wrote: post #412
thebean11 wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What you describe is timing the market though? Specifically, getting in on a run with confidence you can get out before the crash.

No definitely not assuming you can get out before the crash. I'm talking about longer term investors who see the Tether crash as temporary, not a permanent end to crypto.

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#422

Post by null_shift »

arcticbull wrote: post #360
drfxyjhdyfrhgc wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would. I'd wager Tether's collapse would cause inflows to other stablecoins. It's also worth noting that smart contract based stablecoins, such as DAI, are incapable of being under-collateralized.

From where? USDT will be worth exactly $0 so some 80% of all trading volume in crypto will evaporate instantly, and so will probably 80% of its dollar equivalents.

doesn’t saying the volume evaporates instantly presumes that there is no real demand? (certainly a possibility)

alternatively, could another stablecoin take the place of tether, without any fundamental change in crypto trading volume?

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#423

Post by skizm »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #394
skizm wrote: post #382

Seems 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 organizatio…

The point of the article is that Tether is already doing all of this traditional finance stuff under the hood, but just with Chinese paper so they can rake in more yield, but is way riskier.

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#424

Post by tim333 »

fny wrote: post #194
adflux wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bennett has done a fantastic job. There WILL be a movie about this company when investors lose faith. Like next decades, "the big short".

But how exactly do you short stablecoins? You can't and even if you did the game is heavily rigged against you. If you remember in the movie, Cohodes got his ass handed to him as banks margin called him out of his position and that's in a regulated market. These guys own their market and the exchange on which it originates. There's no way to even verify if they received dollars for every tether issued and by some mir…

You can short Tether against USD on Kraken. It's rather expensive though.

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#425

Post by tim333 »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #28

I don't understand how Tether has survived this long. Bitfinex and Tether sure look transparently like a fraud, all the way back to the "no really we have $1 in the bank for every Tether but you can't audit us" days. And yet it continues to occupy its role as the underpinning of most cryptocurrency markets. Why hasn't it blown up yet? My best guess is that it's useful to everyone taking in money from new retail inves…

It's quite likely they put some of the money into Bitcoin and are well ahead. They pretty much admit holding Bitcoin and things like the Celsius loan are profitable. I don't think they'll collapse due to not having funds. If anything gets them it will be the executives being arrested for money laundering or similar.

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#427

Post by arcticbull »

trident5000 wrote: post #418
arcticbull wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was in the NYAG settlement. [1] Transcripts here. [2] Merlin is Bitfinex/Tether CFO Giancarlo Devasini. [3] Oz and CCC is Oz Yosef - their contact at the Panamanian money launderer Crypto Capital Corp. Here, they parked almost $1B of co-mingled funds without a contract at all and had it seized by various world authorities. Merlin [15.10.18 10:01] I need to provide customers with precise answer at this point, can't…

Just to be clear, none of what you've provided concludes that tether manipulated (pumps) the btc market. Its still a tin foil hat theory from people who just dont like cryptocurrecy.

Me: > I don't know there's conclusive evidence at this point...

I already said there was no conclusive evidence yet, but that's not the same thing as "debunked." A judge agrees. Had it in fact been "debunked repeatedly" then the lawsuit would not be permitted to proceed.

>> The court did dismiss RICO charges against the defendants. However, it found the plaintiffs adequately alleged monopolization, market manipulation, common law fraud, and violation of the Commodities Exchange Act.

A judge literally found based on the plaintiffs evidence that they have adequately alleged market manipulation.

So, let's see where that goes then, shall we?

Either the judge is wearing a tinfoil hat too, or I suggest new talking points.

Of course I don't like cryptocurrency, lol, it's hot garbage IMO. However, I wouldn't like it any more or less at $1,000 than I would at $100,000 (well, except that Bitcoin's environmental footprint cap is proportional to its price - so lower is better for the planet).

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#428

Post by naveen99 »

freewilly1040 wrote: post #411
naveen99 wrote: post #335

The money stuff newsletter is less sensationalistic and more interesting and forward looking: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-10-07/matt-l...

… and sourced from the same Bloomberg article under discussion.

It’s too bad he didn’t reference bitmex or deribit. I mean you don’t need tether to simulate dollars from Bitcoin. Arthur Hayes was a close second to Matt Levine in the quality of his financial analysis in his crypto digest.

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#429

Post by jimmydorry »

forgotmyoldname wrote: post #246
jimmydorry wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part I have never seen elaborated on in the "Tether is a Ponzi" claims is at what point will people using Tether make money? Tethers are IOUs to facilitate moving USD between financial institutions (mainly between exchanges, and mostly used by the exchanges themselves). You can spend $1 USD to get 1 Tether that is "redeemable" (by trade, not through the Tether company) for exactly $1 USD. A Ponzi requires some ki…

Tether takes a bunch of money to facilitate users converting to Bitcoin or other currencies. The maintainers of Tether keep sucking up real money, minting Tether that they claim is backed by cash (real currency), but the real cash backing goes poof and they aren't demonstrating that there is any stable backing. But so long as other crypto isn't crashing, they can reliably take real cash, skim off some for themselves,…

If too many people decide to withdraw their money from any financial system (e.g. banks, brokers, exchanges, etc.), you can expect there to be liquidity problems. These are not Ponzis.

This distinction doesn't even make sense though. The Tethers aren't redeemable directly from the Tether company. People redeem Tether for USD by market transaction. As these Tethers are just USD IOUs, it doesn't seem to matter much whether they are fully backed by USD, as long as there is liquidity to buy and sell them for their full USD value as required.

Re: Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

#430

Post by shawabawa3 »

qeternity wrote: post #85
shawabawa3 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's trivially easy for anyone to short tether, simply take out a DeFi loan of tether backed by any other crypto collateral (including e.g. USDC so you don't have liquidation risk). It will just cost you a few % APR to keep the position open

Absolutely do not do this. Do not bet against the house inside casino walls. If you have enough capital to weather potential dislocations, the only real way to play this is to be long off shore (perps, probably) and short CME. This position is long BTC/USDT vs short BTC/USD, the net of which is short USDT/USD. The reason for doing it this way is if it doesn’t play out, or goes to 100k first, you’re just wearing a bit…

I'm not sure you understood what I was suggesting...

A more concrete example:

Buy $10k USDC, borrow $5K USDT on Aave, trade this for USDC on Uniswap

Net result: $15k USDC and -$5K USDT, if USDT crashes you gain $5k, if it doesn't, you pay ~4% APR on the $5K loan (current rate, variable)

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