Tether has been an openly fraudulent enterprise since the beginning. Pretty much anyone with any experience in financial securities and even passing knowledge of crypto was raising red flags, including on this website. Never wanna blame the victim, but kinda feel like anyone with any due diligence here was just hoping for casino rallies and didn't believe what they were being sold.
If you look at market data, it looks like tether has managed to keep the peg of the asset quite well along the years. So if you have parked some of your assets to tether, you have had very good possibility to change it back to other crypto-assets any time.
I don't want to promote tether and I have never touched it myself, but when it seems to be working and liquid for many exchanged world-wide, your statements seem a little bit off. Tether may be having shitloads of issues but according to market data the issues haven't hit the end-user and the USD peg yet.
The main issue is what will happen when holders of USDT try to redeem them. Tether says it's immune to a bank run, because they have the entire outstanding amount of USDT (3.83B at time of writing) is backed 74% with USD.
If you believe that a company without access to banking actually has 2.8B USD available for disbursement, then you are more optimistic than I am.
I'm just saying that tether has worked for years, and the peg seems to be still there. All those years also people have been saying that tether will lose its liquidity any moment. Might be but tha market data says what it says.
As I said I haven't used tether and highly probably will never use it - I don't have any use case, bitcoin is enough for me. However if I had some use-case for moderate amount and months of timespan, I would probably use it (depending of course on other alternatives - AFAIK USDT is de facto "USD coin" on many exchanges).
Tether has not worked for years, they say on their website they're not redeemable for dollars ever. Yes, I suppose by that metric chuck-e-cheese tokens work too, but you'd have the same luck trying to get your cash back out of either. It's "worked" on a hope and a prayer because crypto-to-crypto exchanges who can't achieve AML/KYC compliance rely on it. How else are the narcos and the sanctioned supposed to launder their proceeds? When this whole thing goes tits up how long do you think it'll take before the founders go "missing" like Gerald Cotten?
I'm just saying that tether has
worked for years, and the peg
seems to be still there.
A parachute that has "seemed to be there for years" is all very well - but evidence it's fine when no-one pulls the ripcord doesn't tell us what'll happen when someone does.
And if it's a parachute, what happens when someone pulls the ripcord is kinda the most important thing :)
The US authorities have literally shown in court they have vast sums backing tethers. Bifinex itself is a money printing machine.
I'd love to take some serious 5 figure wagers with the people who say this stuff. Because they've been saying it for years now and have been consistently proven wrong.
The majority of markets don't care if it is 100% backed, like they don't care when their bank does fractional reserve. They care about whether the USD peg will last within their timespan they plan to use tether.
One of the most common advertised applications for tether is arbitrage between exchanges. There it hardly matters whether tether has 100% reserves, what matters if the peg stays within the days that you are doing the arbitrage (buying tether from one exchange, transfering to other, selling it).
You’re arguing in circles. Maybe you would care, but the point OP is making is that the people who are engaging in the transactions that cause it to be pegged at $1 don’t care if Tether is lying because it doesn’t affect their use case in any significant way.
> The majority of markets don't care if it is 100% backed, like they don't care when their bank does fractional reserve
Fractional reserve banks' deposits are backed more than 100% with more or less liquid assets. That's why nobody cares if a bank does fractional reserve. With tether there is no reason to believe there is even close to 100% backing. Unless you count as a reason an unverified claim that they are backed.
I also have an hard time it's backed with MORE value and whether that value is fictional or not. The 2008 crash has shown that it wasn't actually backed by much.
>The majority of markets don't care if it is 100% backed, like they don't care when their bank does fractional reserve.
Banks are insured, and in general they haven't failed for the last like 100+ years.
I do think what you are saying about usdt is mostly true though, however if(when) usdt does fail the entire market will take a dive off a cliff. So even if your assets are in other cryptos it still represents a systemic risk to the entire system.
>Banks are insured, and in general they haven't failed for the last like 100+ years.
Not sure what you're trying to say here, given Bear Stearns and Lehman just failed ~11yrs ago, and the entire banking system would have imploded if not for trillions in Fed lending support and govt stimulus.
Oh yes a short seller writing articles on medium must have the unbiased truth we're looking for. The US authorities should have saved time by just contacting him instead of doing an investigation
It’s important to take any information someone presents you that doesn’t line up with your existing worldview and just find a way to ignore it, that’s why were all here right?
I can't speak to how well-backed their reserves are but the idea of a "wildcat bank" [0] almost certainly comes to mind whenever somebody mentions tether.
Curious what HN thinks about Maker DAO. Dai is pegged to the dollar by a decentralized scheme where people loan/borrow an underlying asset. Seems to be floating pretty close to $1 and I wonder if it will replace USDT...
Serious question. What is the reason for holding Tethers?
They a supposedly pinned to the dollar, so there isn't much point in holding them hoping they will gain in value. If anything their peg is questionable so they are only likely to decrease in value.
As far as I can see their only purpose is a a way of transferring between other crypto currencies and exchanges, but you would only ever need the tethers very short term while you completed the movement or transaction.
Holding tether is useful when you are trading on an exchange that has no fiat on ramp or checking account. Many exchanges are crypto-only, you send crypto in, trade, crypto out. You can hold tether if you want to be exposed to the USD position without having to send out
So to clarify... If you were holding bitcoin, but decided you wanted out because you think it's about to go down, you'd exchange for tether and hold that instead until you decided that bitcoin is ready to start going back up again.
And you accept all the associated risk rather than fully cashing out to real dollars because your jurisdiction doesn't treat crypto to crypto purchase as a taxable event?
On a crypto only exchange, if you want to have some of your holdings fixed to the dollar then you hold it as tether. Usually because you are getting out of crypto or waiting to get in. Taxable events are on you to report and pay regardless.
I believe it's not as clear cut as that. I believe that in many jurisdictions there are various rules that allow trading within certain assets classes to not be treated as a taxable event for capital gains purposes unless you trade outside the class back to a regular currency. The taxable event can occur only when you realise the profit or loss.
Whether this is the case with crypto currencies is all dependent on how your particular jurisdiction has chosen to classify crypto. Or often just your best guess if your particular jurisdiction hasn't been clear on the classification as many haven't.
Receiving the proceeds of the sale of one crypto currency in another crypto currency doesn't magically wipe out your tax liability. Your capital gains are still taxable, just as they would be if you bartered stocks without first selling your holdings.
Oh for sure. I didn't mean to imply it was a good idea. For anybody in the USA this is not going to be a legal winner as any transformation from crypto A to crypto B is going to be a taxable event.
I bet there's still plenty of people using this for tax purposes, either misguidingly for tax avoidance or explicitly for tax evasion.
I know there are a lot of crypto skeptics here, but if you believe in Bitcoin more than Tether at least then you should buy Bitcoin...if Tether does indeed fail Bitcoin will almost certainly spike past 2017 highs.
This assumes the price of bitcoin is not manipulated, specifically by bitfinex and tether. Both may go down together when more news of manipulation comes out.
At this point, I wouldn't recommend going near any of the current cryptocurrencies, for any use.
Since it's very difficult to convert USDT into real USD, if people were desperately trying to exit their Tether positions, they'd likely do it by changing for other cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.
I think that would be a spike in Bitcoin relative to Tether, not relative to the dollar. In the extreme, people might want to exchange any amount of Tether for the tiniest piece of a Bitcoin, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the Bitcoin/dollar rate changes.
Why ignore any other negative impacts like, lack of confidence in crypto from USDT collapsing because crypto is still a Wild West having a random corp printing money at will and there will certainly be a group of people who will face huge loss when billions just evaporate and the impact all the exchanges take who are dealing with USDT? SEC is not going to like it and can probably lock ETF for a good while.
"Loaned USDT" in this context just means created tether and gave it before the wire transfers went through (but presumably these pending wire transfers count as assets, especially considering they can blacklist tokens at will). Not exactly damning evidence.
Also it seems like "illegally traded" just means that NY companies set up foreign shell companies to skirt NY regulations? I don't see how this is iFinex's fault either tbh
Yeah, Bitfinex and Tether won't have anything to worry about...
...as long as they don't want to have USD denominated bank accounts, or transact with USD, or do business with people with USD denominated bank accounts. Which, of course, they do. If you touch the US financial system in any way, or if any of your counterparties do, or if your counterparties want to have other counterparties that do, then you need to care deeply about what the US federal government and the NY state government think.
Gemini and Coinbase are on the forefront of legitimizing cryptos. They go out of their way to cooperate with American authorities, which is a good move for their business model. Contrast this with a crypto exchange based outside of the US that would loose their clientele if they worked with the American government in any way. Why you ask? Do research about Americans trying to open bank accounts in Europe. Basically under the new laws banks in Europe prefer to reject Americans rather than try and go through all the extra reporting involved.
Most crypto is traded outside of the US though; most of the volume is on Binance and Bitmex. In this sense they cut themselves off from many customers. The advantage of their business model seems to be that with less competition from other US-law-abiding exchanges (because there are so few of them), they can charge much higher fees: Coinbase fees are higher than most large non-US exchanges, and Gemini fees are insane, something like 1% per trade.
The article says after being banned from doing business in New York, they opened up offshore shell companies to open accounts with NY banks, engaged accounting firms in NY, and dealt directly with NY based investors.
That is pretty solidly doing business in New York.
Most of their executives live in NY. Most of their largest investors live in NY. They assisted investors in creating offshore business entities. They used NY accounting firms.
They could simply arrest employees, freeze their assets, and charge them with crimes. Then freeze assets and charge banks that did business with them, similar for investors.
If it wasn't a company largely run by and for Americans living in New York it would be a different story.
"Tether and Bitfinex also allegedly opened accounts at several New York banks, housed most of their senior executives in the city, and engaged New York based accounting firms for audits. "
USDT has a strong following in APAC countries. Also for some crypto users part of its allure is that it’s vaguely sketchy - it means they are less likely to have their funds blacklisted, a feature which Tether maintains the ability to do but has never enforced as far as I’m aware.
If you are getting into the space now USDC is an audited stablecoin backed by Coinbase and Circle which has the second highest issuance after Tether. Most likely you would prefer USDC over tether.
seibelj has a link to his twitter account in his profile. On that account, its quite clear he works for Circle. IMO, it's pretty unethical to promote this type of investment without revealing that conflict of interest. It's also par for the course with crypto coins.
USDC is not a security, anyone can buy it accredited or not without going to a broker dealer. It's an asset backed stablecoin and you don't buy it as an investment, it's a tool to tokenize USD to get it onto the crypto network rails. It also is the #2 stablecoin by marketcap.
I will disclose that I know way more about this industry than all of you commenting that I'm "shilling" as if this is some altcoin scam. Welcome to crypto
FWIW I didn’t find your comment to be ‘shilling’, particularly as you seem to be the crypto technical guy. Most importantly I dont think you sought to gain anything by posting that. I doubt some random comment on HN is shifting the needle on your USDC holdings.
Plenty of people promote their own work on HN as it’s their area of expertise.
But crypto has some baggage attached so people get sensitive.
Yes. And even if you do all that and stay on the right side of the regulators, you’re not out of the woods. You then have to do additional work to minimise the chance that investors successfully sue you later too if they lose money.
And you need to do all that in every jurisdiction you touch, plus likely the US even if you don’t touch it.
I think it means seibelj works for Circle and is shilling their stablecoin. The irony is that the entirety of "crypto" outside of the people doing the academic work for it is not just vaguely sketchy, but extremely sketchy.
Well, don't know for these stablecoins but to me the "normal crypto" meaning bitcoin is very easy to understand and use. It is like commodity nowadays - it is up to the user whether to use it for scetchy things or for normal things.
Are you serious? You need to establish presence at an exchange meaning you need to scan and send your ID to a company which more likely than not -- does QuadrigaCX ring a bell -- is run by scammers. Then you need to buy bitcoin and store it somewhere... and then send it to someone. The sending costs an unknown amount, takes an unknwon amount of time, the receiver gets something but none of you can predict how much that is actually worth by the time they receive it. If they want to do something with it they need to go through the exchange rigmarole. And you call this very easy to use.
For people who know what they are doing, Bitcoin provides a new way to move money across borders. Almost always, the fees will be lower than they would with any other money transfer service. Most money transfer services will also have KYC policies which closely mirror what is required at crypto exchanges.
You only need to hold Bitcoin for ~1 hour total in the entire process. You can avoid making international wires by using domestic payment systems on each end of the transaction. If you do some research, you may be able to move money across borders and actually make a small profit of 3-4%, depending on the sending / receiving currency.
All said and done, Bitcoin allows people to have much greater control of their money. It is very useful for moving money between countries without subjecting yourself to the wait times and high fees associated with cross-border transactions.
Apparently, there originally was something like 60 cents backing each $1 of tether. Then bitifinex needed the money to cover its legitimate business, so they swapped the tether dollars with an equal amount of dollars in a frozen bank account. And the account was frozen because the _bank_ it was deposited in has had all its accounts frozen by numerous investigating governments. After the swap, Bitfinix then had to be loaned $900 million to back tether, with shares in its business as collateral.
Sketchy is a generous characterization of tether. Tether is fraudulent.
Let's not mention that the same two people signed the loan documentation on both sides of the transaction. Funny for all the denials that Tether and Bitfinex have any relationship.
Being sketchy means Tether are less likely to do that (blacklist) despite claiming they do. So some people are attracted to that type of organization…so they won’t get their coins blacklisted for whatever reason.
My buddy was telling me he transferred bitcoin from one exchange to another. When he sold his bitcoin, he got taxed at the full value of what he sold the coin for not just his gains. Couldn’t he have just parked his funds and basically used that as a bank account?
This can happen with stocks as well, someone the agent will report 0 cost basis and IRS will believe it and you have to document the actual cost basis. For me that made the IRS happy and I think your friend could have done the same here if he can document what he bought them for.
Who did the tax collection? Did the exchange collect it automatically, or did your buddy do the filing? If the former, the exchange is sketchy; if the latter, your friend messed up.
The exchanges don't collect taxes. Tax office probably requested information from the exchange and the exchange complied, and the tax office calculated the total amount withdrawn as taxable. The idea that an exchange would be calculating taxes is ridiculous.
He did the filing with the tax form that company sent. I think the exchange he transferred from was sketchy or not confirmed. In that case, when you sell, they show the full price.
Technologically superior? The Omni implementation is being dropped by binance because it's so slow and expensive and they're using the erc20 token instead - exactly what USDC uses
I'm working on a new project that detects when cryptocurrency people use the word "FUD" and automatically triggers a giant novelty boxing glove to come out of their monitor and bop them in the nose.