[earthtolazlo]

There are a lot of cryptocurrency folks talking up Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation and Federal Reserve policies. But when it comes to Tether printing billions of counterfeit dollars every month to inflate the cryptocurrency markets... crickets.

[vmception]

Riiiiight, because no cryptocurrency folk has ever criticized Tether. That is sarcasm, it is a recurring topic for most of last decade till now.

Inductive reasoning suggests that Tether dollars are mostly and usually created accurately as they have weathered state actor lawsuits, some segments of the market itself choose competitors primarily for better transparency and a lack bad history.

Given the similar percentage growth of similar stablecoins like USDC and DAI, there just is a market for stablecoins where capital completely skips bitcoin to enter the digital asset market. USDC issuance size is just as large as Tether’s has been in the recent past, while Tether was weathering the exact same controversies as it has today. This suggests there is just a market for stablecoins, simple as that. This actually bolsters the general credibility of Tether functioning mostly as they always claimed it did where Tether was created only in response to deposits on Bitfinex (except when it wasnt, but usually).

[lawn]

Crickets? Cryptocurrency folks slam Tether all the time.

[bigphishy]

Actually the EU has begun to propose legislation to regulate stablecoins and their issuance. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2020/9/11/stablecoins-in-r...

So, there are problems with tether and other stablecoins, but they can and may well be regulated, as cryptoassets become more ingrained in the global financial systems. I am shocked that bitcoin is still around, and as I have said, the longer it is around, the more legitimacy it gains.

Keep in mind, the same cryptography that secures global banking system, is the same cryptography used to secure bitcoin transactions.

[seibelj]

Tethers are not printed out of thin air. But me saying this doesn’t mean anyone on HN will believe it, although they similarly believe other random Internet strangers because it agrees with their preconceived desire that Tether is fraudulent.

[doggosphere]

Tether might not "print" out of thin air but the company is so suspicious and unethical that it would not surprise me.

- Tether was only backed 74% as of April 2019 rather than 1:1 (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-30/tether-sa...)

- Tether loaned Bitfinex ~$600m after Bitfinex got hacked or ran into liquidity issues (https://www.coindesk.com/bitfinex-tether-nyag-hearing). The two are owned by the same people.

- Won't allow their books to be audited. etc, etc.

[vmception]

Don't you see the irony of that? When the New York AG focused their lasers onto Tether not being back 1:1, it was because it became unbacked, which ironically squashes the assumptions people had for all those the years prior, because it was functioning as the company said it was the whole time, until it wasn't.

[Johnjonjoan]

If a tree falls in the woods and no-one is around to hear it does it make a sound?

..am I misunderstanding your argument or are you saying that if the authorities aren't investigating wrongdoing it can't be happening?

[vmception]

No, the authorities specifically said it was backed 1:1 like Tether said, until Tether became a self-referencing meme of itself and NY moved on them when it wasn't. Basically most of the time, people were wrong about Tether.

[part1of2]

You're drawing a conclusion that isn't there. The AG is not never said they reviewed Tether's books and it was indeed 1:1

[doggosphere]

I mean I guess I agree. Every USDT they issued while not being secured is basically "printing".

[bmm6o]

Is this defense more nuanced than "before they committed fraud they didn't commit fraud"? Yeah, i guess you could see that as a silver lining, but it puts it squarely in the past.

[vmception]

Its not a defense and the point is that people were wrong about tether most of its lifespan and most of the time even after they actually went fractional reserve.

If you said Tether was printing non-backed Tethers in 2017 and pumping the market, you were wrong.

If you said it in early 2018 you were wrong.

Afterwards you would have been mostly wrong.

The product does not offer transparency that competing products do. And thats it. You have no way of knowing if you are wrong or not until a filing shows up in court later and even then it is just part of an allegation.

Tether has a $17bn marketcap because about $17bn dollars were deposited into the Tether printer and are still there and that was true most of the time despite many people not wanting to believe it during the times that it was 100% true until ironically ceasing to be 100% true.

[sebmellen]

On that note, https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed is a great source.

[whoisninja]

not your keys, not your Bitcoin

Tether is fiat-madness squared