[seibelj]

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.

https://www.circle.com/en/usdc

[dagenix]

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.

[seibelj]

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

[dmix]

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.

[floodyberry-]

You definitely come across as an impartial subject matter expert!

[colechristensen]

It is enormously difficult to promote securities legally. Disclosing a conflict of interest is the tip of the iceberg.

[tomatocracy]

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.

[solveit]

USDC is exactly not an investment, but otherwise you're not wrong.

[teekert]

It could be if your local currency is not USD.

[FDSGSG]

It could be, but it's still dishonest to describe what seibelj was doing as "promoting an investment".

[jnordwick]

Do you want to disclose that work for Circle? So maybe your opinion might be as like, more than a little biased?

[trophycase]

Not OP and not a Circle employee but he is absolutely right if, especially if you are a US citizen.

[FDSGSG]

> So maybe your opinion might be as like, more than a little biased?

Why would that make his opinion any less bias based? Most opinions tend to be like that.

Is there any specific opinion in his comment you object to?

I've dissected the comment below, it should be easy to point out the specific part that bothers you.

-

Opinions where the employer seems completely irrelevant:

> 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,

-

Simple statements of fact:

>a feature which Tether maintains the ability to do but has never enforced as far as I’m aware

>USDC is an audited stablecoin backed by Coinbase and Circle which has the second highest issuance after Tether

-

A possibly biased opinion, (But really just a fact, USDC is far less likely to disappear overnight than USDT. Anyone familiar with both will agree.)

>Most likely you would prefer USDC over tether.

[duxup]

"vaguely sketchy"

What does that mean?

That doesn't sound like a positive thing.

[floodyberry-]

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.

[repomies68]

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.

[chx]

ROTFLMAO

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.

Bitcoin was, is always will be nothing more than a novel scam. It's not a Ponzi... it's a novel form of scam. https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/

[bitreality]

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.

[ryanlol]

>The sending costs an unknown amount, takes an unknwon amount of time,

This is a downright lie.

>the receiver gets something but none of you can predict how much that is actually worth by the time they receive it

This is just misleading, the recipient gains control of the transmitted bitcoin almost instantly. Confirmation delays are known.

[chx]

I do not lie.

> The sending costs an unknown amount

Here's you can see historic daily average Bitcoin transaction fees both in dollars per transaction and in satoshis per byte https://bitcoinfees.info/

> takes an unknwon amount of time

Here's the average time for one confirmation: https://coincentral.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Screensho... here

> This is just misleading,

But it's not, there's a time delay between when you initiate exchanging your real money to scam money and the receiver finishes the exchange back and during that time bitcoin can move in any direction.

[Afforess]

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.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-26/things...

[FireBeyond]

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.

[H8crilA]

There are theories that USDT is not actually (fully) backed by dollars, and instead just minted to push BTC value up.

https://www.tetherreport.com/

[dmix]

> it means they are less likely to have their funds blacklisted

[duxup]

Why would being "sketchy" do that?

[dmix]

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.

[carbocation]

If you want to buy cryptocurrency, why not just buy Bitcoin?

In contrast, I don't see a worthy reason to sell US dollars for any stablecoin.

[Semaphor]

I always thought Tether is mainly used for parking money when trading.

[theturtletalks]

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?

[kmonsen]

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.

[ISL]

Sounds like your buddy may wish to chat with a CPA/tax-advisor.

[reissbaker]

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.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/investing/bitcoin-taxes/

[repomies68]

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.

[astura]

If a sale is reported to the IRS and the exchange doesn't know (or doesn't report) the cost basis of the coins then the person who sold the Bitcoin is responsible for reporting their cost basis. If they didn't report a cost basis then the IRS is going to come back and assume it's zero.

[theturtletalks]

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.

[astura]

I mean even if the exchange messed up and took out more tax than they should have, he would just fix that at tax filing time and get a refund.

If the exchange was overseas/super sketchy it's possible that the exchange just plain stole some of his money and claimed it was "for taxes."

[JauntyHatAngle]

People use it to transfer between crypto and FIAT (representation).

You can park it outside the crypto market, ready to buy back into crypto at any moment.

[homero]

It helps with transferring cash between exchanges

[carbocation]

Any quantity of Bitcoin can be transferred between exchanges for pennies these days.

[xur17]

That's not useful if you are trying to arbitrage Bitcoin between 2 exchanges.

[baby]

And in the mean time the value has droped tenfolds.

[homero]

Not when you're trying to hedge with cash

[baby]

Look at the marketcap of tether. There's obviously a use case.

[r32a_]

Tether is technologically superior and has 90% of marketshare compared to any other stable coin.

If FUD scares you then crypto trading is not for you

[shawabawa3]

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

[XMPPwocky]

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.