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Bitfinex and Tether required to end all trading activity with New Yorkers

ag.ny.gov

491–500 of 517 posts

Re: Bitfinex and Tether required to end all trading activity with New Yorkers

#491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may help that we bank at all of the same banks as Kraken, so most transfers are internal transfers. But even to outside banks, normally US wires should be pretty fast (usually within the day). It may also be the case that we literally wire millions every day on a regular basis, so our wires probably don't get held up at any compliance checks.

> It may help that we bank at all of the same banks as Kraken Sounds like a good idea. Do you happen to know if a list of such banks is public?

In Europe, one bank is Fidor.

Re: Bitfinex and Tether required to end all trading activity with New Yorkers

#492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make multiple false, assertions in one comment, backtrack those assertions in other comments, and then pretend your position has remained unchanged the whole time. It comes across as dishonest and makes me, an outsider, wonder how much tether you own.

Thats because they aren't assertions, its called a conversation

It's called lying, first to others and then to yourself.

Re: Bitfinex and Tether required to end all trading activity with New Yorkers

#493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My other comment here was useful with other sources showing that exchanges do fake data. https://medium.com/@nic__carter/assessing-bitcoins-liquidity... https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-nysearca-2019-01/srnysearca2...

The second source uses Coinbase as the standard for accuracy and compares another exchange to it...

Yes because Coinbase is a legit exchange. It also doesnt use Tether. That doesnt mean that their data on Tether volumes is correct.

Re: Bitfinex and Tether required to end all trading activity with New Yorkers

#494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is supremely ironic that we’re supposed to believe that the best way to escape money printing is to buy a cryptocurrency that was invented out of thin air, which is continuously mined (during most of our lifetimes) out of thin air by doing useless calculations. Or even worse, a basket of multiple crypto currencies, where the number of available crypto currencies and crypto assets grows larger every day.

It’s not really surprising when anyone pushing crypto to you also happen to hold a lot of crypto. It’s self-serving advice 100% of the time. It’s pretty much a staple also to call every other crypto you don’t hold a fraud trying to steal the spotlight.

While it may well be self-serving, this is also a near tautological statement, as you'd expect someone who pushes crypto to also hold a lot of crypto if they genuinely believe in it - whether for sound reasons or not. As such the fact they're holding crypto tells us nothing about whether they're pushing it because they're holding it or pushing it because they believe in it.

Re: Bitfinex and Tether required to end all trading activity with New Yorkers

#495
post #415

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Not necessarily because Tether the company will use the USD or similar that they have to buy tethers on the market if the price falls below $0.995 or so. The worry is if there are say 30bn tethers out there and they only have $20bn cash and enough people redeem the the price will stay about $1 until the $20bn runs out and then suddenly drop to not much. It's actually possible that rather than just holding US$ against…

So the consensus here seems to be that Tether the company is doing some sort of fractional reserve banking? I'm assuming no one on hacker news is holding Tether ... To the point of actions speaking louder than words, why are there people who trust Tether enough to hold it? If there is no trust there wouldn't everyone redeem and create a bank run?

I've held tethers before now. The 'fractional reserve' thing is unknown. If I were a crook and running the thing I probably would have printed lots of tethers to buy bitcoin in the slump then sell them at a profit to fix the reserves and buy and island. But who knows unless they do an audit which they seem very reluctant to do. The above scenario would be illegal but would not lead to the collapse of tether unless the law got them which is tricky as they are based in various offshore locations.

I've been through this whole tether is a scam which will collapse thing before around late 2017 or Jan 18 and inspite of the crypto downturn they didn't.

A HN story from Nov 2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15745441 for example.

Re: Bitfinex and Tether required to end all trading activity with New Yorkers

#496
post #441
post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The S&P is unusually pricey at the moment though.

It's only unusually pricey if you expect to always live in a world of 3-4% interest rates. We're no longer living in that world, though. The thing is, you could say the same thing at nearly any point between 1999 and 2021, and be right, and it would still have been a good idea to invest into the S&P.

As a long term investor though thinking 'this too shall pass' is quite a good strategy which means at some point the high prices will fade and you will be left with your dividends and earnings which at current prices are not giving you much of a yield.

Also I've been following Jeremy Grantham who is now preaching that the end is nigh. He has a good track record https://youtu.be/RYfmRTyl56w

He recommends emerging markets and value stocks by the way where valuations are more reasonable.

Re: Bitfinex and Tether required to end all trading activity with New Yorkers

#497
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it would not, plenty of stablecoins to take it's place, or just crypto/crypto ratios.

That assumes that Tether is being honest and not printing unbacked coins to drive the price up. So, no, it would still tank the price, because the price is quite likely inflated through fraud.

Let's not ignore major funds and companies investing in BTC like crazy, that's what is propping up the price not the "Tether scam" that's being going on for 5 years unproven.

Re: Bitfinex and Tether required to end all trading activity with New Yorkers

#498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax arbitrage, iirc. In some jurisdictions like the US, exiting your position into USD is a taxable event for capital gains taxes. I seem to recall stable coins were invented to avoid that. I can't imagine tax authorities allow that loophole though.

> Tax arbitrage, iirc. In some jurisdictions like the US, exiting your position into USD is a taxable event for capital gains taxes. I seem to recall stable coins were invented to avoid that. I can't imagine tax authorities allow that loophole though. If they did, it looks like it's closed now. At least in the US, converting between two cryptocurrencies is a taxable event: > There are plenty of questions about whethe…

I wonder what % of that is getting declared...

Re: Bitfinex and Tether required to end all trading activity with New Yorkers

#499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one the USD is only the largest reserve currency used internationally: GBP, EUR and JPY are also used as reserve currencies. For another the US has been trying to reduce the role of the dollar as a reserve currency because it actually has significant downsides and fewer benefits than is popularly portrayed - this even has it's own term, "exorbitant privilege". Here's Ben Bernanke talking about it: https://www.bro…

Thank you, that was interesting reading. Not sure why you were downvoted.

No problem, this is another article on the subject I'd bookmarked:

https://www.ussc.edu.au/analysis/the-reserve-currency-myth-t...

Re: Bitfinex and Tether required to end all trading activity with New Yorkers

#500
post #272

I've been following Tether for quite a long time. I have no absolute proof it is a scam but the writing is on the wall. Here are some facts. - The current Market Cap of USDT is 34 Billion Dollars. It was 4B this time last year. Since the value is pegged this means there has been an influx of cash of 30 B into this shady company in the last year alone. Who invested this money? We have no idea since Tether doesn't disc…

I've also been following Tether a while. I even shorted a bit back in 2018 but I'm starting to think maybe they are basically legit apart from maybe not dotting all the Is on the money launder regs. Here's Gregory Pepin "Deputy Chief Executive Officer at Deltec Bank & Trust", Tether's bankers, saying they have the money: https://youtu.be/rQ3nQ8-KY28?t=281
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