As always, Matt Levine is shockingly informative: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-10-07/matt-l... Key quote: 1. You get a bunch of Bitcoins. 2. You slice them into junior and senior claims. 3. You sell the junior claims to people who want levered Bitcoin: people who want margin loans against their Bitcoins, etc., who want to gamble on Bitcoin without putting up too much cash. 4. You sell the senior cl…
$1M bounty for details on Tether’s backing
61–70 of 326 posts
Re: $1M bounty for details on Tether’s backing
#62Am I missing something here or is this basically a bounty for a black hat hack campaign against tether? I mean, yeah, fuck those guys, but how is any kind of enforcement to be done on how this information was obtained? Sysadmin at Microsoft or google with access to their emails may be mighty tempted by this eh?
It is highly dependent on what prosecutors have jurisdiction and the politics involved. The Duke Lacrosse prosecution is a good example of a prosecutor going over the top on charges for political reasons, and the Jeffrey Epstein plea bargain in 2007 is an example of the opposite.
Re: $1M bounty for details on Tether’s backing
#63Sounds like they're offering to bribe an insider to disclose specifics about the "commercial paper"[1], which is presumably how a company like Tether would make most of its money. That is, taking advantage of the time-value of money over short periods of time ( Note that Tether looks shady at first blush, with a link to "Proof of Transparency"[2] that is content-free. I also find it sus that their job listings only l…
> Is it illegal for a private person to offer to pay someone to illegally snitch on an illegal operation?
It's not illegal to pay someone for information. If you induce them to violate an NDA, yes, it could be. But given the question "under what jurisdiction does Tether really operate" is a debatable question, I'd say it's probably risky but fine. (If you trade on that information, it could be a different story.)
Re: $1M bounty for details on Tether’s backing
#64There has been nothing but Tether doom and gloom since 2017 and yet here it is still at 1.0000 If anyone thinks this will drop, now is the opportunity to short, I suppose.
Circa 2020: There has been nothing but Wirecard doom and gloom since 2019 and yet here it is still at 115. If anyone thinks this will drop, now is the opportunity to short, I suppose.
Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean you’re wrong.
Re: $1M bounty for details on Tether’s backing
#65Disclosure: Hindenburg Research does not hold positions, either long or short, in Tether, bitcoin or any cryptocurrency at the time of this press release.
I wonder why this Reaserch firm is offering such a substantial bounty for information on Tether. What's in it for them? Where will this money come from? From their site they provide an answer (and even a "track record") [1]: > We look for (...) man-made disasters floating around in the market and aim to shed light on them before they lure in more unsuspecting victims. Hence it seems they're doing it for the bennefit…
It's marketing.
When Hindenburg publishes equity research, the disclosure is "you should assume that as of the publication date of any short-biased report or letter, Hindenburg Research...has a short position in all stocks (and/or options of the stock) covered herein, and therefore stands to realize significant gains in the event that the price of any stock covered herein declines."
Re: $1M bounty for details on Tether’s backing
#66As always, Matt Levine is shockingly informative: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-10-07/matt-l... Key quote: 1. You get a bunch of Bitcoins. 2. You slice them into junior and senior claims. 3. You sell the junior claims to people who want levered Bitcoin: people who want margin loans against their Bitcoins, etc., who want to gamble on Bitcoin without putting up too much cash. 4. You sell the senior cl…
[deleted]
Re: $1M bounty for details on Tether’s backing
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Presumably they short the shit out of Tether and related stablecoins before they release the information they get. It's certainly for their own gain.
As qeternity pointed out in a comment [1], you want your trade to play out in a dollar denominated, clearinghouse backed financial product. You don't bet against the house in their casino (crypto exchanges), such as shorting tether. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28794377 (not investment advice, educational purposes only)
I would hazard they are planning to target the BTC Futures ETF that opened this morning.
Re: $1M bounty for details on Tether’s backing
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tranching is a thing. It's fine. It works, if you don't pretend AAA-rated securities, which have--and historically had--a very low risk of losses, are both safe and liquid. If tranching were all Tether were doing, it would just be fraud. You can't sell a senior tranche on a pool of assets as a fully-backed security and call it a day. But whatever, Tether did that and more, nobody cared, we're on the next tier of the…
Likely in the case of a bank run, Tether cannot redeem even a cent because their organisation is unable to serve any customer outside few selected one (no staff, no processed). However the damage to retail US investors should be quite well contained, as I do not feel they have significant Tether holdings. It is mostly (shady?) professional traders (Alameda, Celsius) and offshore (China) that use Tether. Tether is 50%…
> the damage to retail US investors should be quite well contained, as I do not feel they have significant Tether holdings
This is my understanding. The U.S. regulatory apparatus appears to have deterred Tether from getting too involved here. China, too, seems to have taken the hint.
Re: $1M bounty for details on Tether’s backing
#69As always, Matt Levine is shockingly informative: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-10-07/matt-l... Key quote: 1. You get a bunch of Bitcoins. 2. You slice them into junior and senior claims. 3. You sell the junior claims to people who want levered Bitcoin: people who want margin loans against their Bitcoins, etc., who want to gamble on Bitcoin without putting up too much cash. 4. You sell the senior cl…
Tranching is a thing. It's fine. It works, if you don't pretend AAA-rated securities, which have--and historically had--a very low risk of losses, are both safe and liquid. If tranching were all Tether were doing, it would just be fraud. You can't sell a senior tranche on a pool of assets as a fully-backed security and call it a day. But whatever, Tether did that and more, nobody cared, we're on the next tier of the…
But they can print more tether, buy bitcoin with that tether, and give you bitcoin as redemptions. This could go on for a very long time.
Re: $1M bounty for details on Tether’s backing
#70There has been nothing but Tether doom and gloom since 2017 and yet here it is still at 1.0000 If anyone thinks this will drop, now is the opportunity to short, I suppose.
Shorting Tether is a great play. Either everyone loses faith and nobody trusts them anymore or.... it stays at $1. You are not going to lose. You just have to pay funding fees for your short which on FTX is around 4% a year. Do you think there is a great chance that Tether is a massive scam and will find its doom within the next 25 years? My answer to that is yes.
> Shorting Tether is a great play
Why do you think there will be a functioning market to pay you out if and when it collapses?