[pontus]

Could you expand on this? I've heard many times that tether is what underlies a lot of the infrastructure of bitcoin trading on exchanges and that the company responsible for backing them is particularly unclear about what's going on and likely engaging in fraud.

As someone who is an amateur looking in, could you help fill in the holes in this picture? Why do we need tether? Why does it matter if tether is not backed 1:1 by USD? If the fraud really is so obvious and impactful, why 1) isn't BTC tanking and 2) why aren't there charges filed against the company?

[aent]

>why aren't there charges filed against the company?

There are, it's currently under investigation, lookup tether/bitfinex new york court case.

Tether is needed as many exchanges cannot trade in USD so need a crypto-substitute in a form of a 1:1 dollar equivalent stable coin.

Not being backed matters because it means a single company can essentially print infinite money and buy up crypto, leading to fast price increases, just like the one we are seeing right now. When you see $30000 price tag on a bitcoin you don't know what percentage of it is actually fake USDT dollars. Right now it doesn't mater as you can exchange usdt for usd 1:1, but one day the music will stop and a "bank run" will happen, which will expose a giant hole and a real price of btc, collapsing the whole scheme.

>why 1) isn't BTC tanking

My current theory is that they co-opted a lot of exchanges, if you read their website https://tether.to/ they admit that they are not backed by USD and mention "loans made by Tether to third parties" which sounds like they give exchanges billions of dollars for IOUs. So exchanges get free billion dollar loans and in turn tether can print more billions and trade it for real money on bitfinex which they own.

[CapmCrackaWaka]

The Gist is that Tether is a cryptocurrency that is supposed to trade at 1:1 USDT:USD. Every tether (their currency denomination) issued is theoretically backed by 1 USD. In 2017, Bitcoin prices soared in large part to the fact that so many people were trading tether for Bitcoin. It turns out that Tether may have arbitrarily issued more USDT than USD they have on hand. Therefore, the buys of bitcoin were essentially fake - trading $0.75 USD worth of tether for $1 of Bitcoin (a Tether lawyer said that Tether only had 75% of the cash necessary to back their supply of USDT).

I'm not sure how it's supposed to affect current prices, however. Tethers are still around, and as far as I know, they have not submitted to an audit, but 1 USDT is still trading for 1 USD.

[microtherion]

> Tethers are still around, and as far as I know, they have not submitted to an audit

They promised to produce documentation that should shed significant light on the situation by January 15 of this year [0]. In recent days, they have issued up to $800M tokens a day [1].

Which either means that everything is going just swimmingly, or that somebody is stuffing a few more suitcases with cash while heading for the airport. We may soon find out.

[0] https://cointelegraph.com/news/ny-attorney-general-expects-d... [1] https://twitter.com/usdcoinprinter/status/134612804290579251...

[Triv888]

> Why do we need tether?

You only get taxed on gains when you transfer coins to "real" currencies like USD... so you can use Tethers instead and buy Bitcoins back after a drop

[jaredtn]

Not true. Converting from BTC to ETH is a taxable event, for example.

[Triv888]

So if I trade fifty $100 cars for a $5,000 car, my income need to be taxed also? How does that work?

What if I transfer from a Bitcoin wallet to another Bitcoin wallet?

[jaredtn]

For the first question, it depends if you bought the fifty cars for $100 each, or if your basis is less than that. Cost basis is key here. And no to the second question.

The IRS has designed crypto as a property, so you are subject to paying capital gains (or claiming capital losses) whenever you sell, convert, pay or earn. Converting one crypto to another (or to USD) is a taxable event, while transferring BTC in one wallet to another wallet is not (since you keep the same property). Further details at https://www.coinbase.com/bitcoin-taxes#paytaxes.

If you sell a car for more than you bought it for, you do owe taxes on that. https://www.carvana.com/research/2020/03/what-to-know-about-....

[Triv888]

> while transferring BTC in one wallet to another wallet is not (since you keep the same property).

It is not since it is a different private key...

[jaredtn]

It's considered the same as an in-kind transfer for stocks from one broker to another.

Again, the understanding of "property" is evolving in this environment, and there are areas of regulatory uncertainty (such as synthetic assets from staking collateral in money markets). However, transferring from one wallet to another is pretty safe territory.

[PKop]

That's an implementation detail in service to controlling value on the ledger. Moving it around does not change that it represents ownership of a quantifiable amount of BTC, unless you sell it or trade it.